diff --git a/physicsnemo/distributed/manager.py b/physicsnemo/distributed/manager.py
index 325b9687e7..5ff3015247 100644
--- a/physicsnemo/distributed/manager.py
+++ b/physicsnemo/distributed/manager.py
@@ -356,7 +356,14 @@ def initialize_slurm(port):
         rank = int(os.environ.get("SLURM_PROCID"))
         world_size = int(os.environ.get("SLURM_NPROCS"))
         local_rank = int(os.environ.get("SLURM_LOCALID"))
-        addr = os.environ.get("SLURM_LAUNCH_NODE_IPADDR")
+        try:
+            addr = os.environ.get("SLURM_LAUNCH_NODE_IPADDR")
+        except TypeError:
+            raise EnvironmentError(
+                'SLURM variable "SLURM_LAUNCH_NODE_IPADDR" was not detected in the environment. Maybe you need to run with "srun"?'
+            )
+
+
 
         DistributedManager.setup(
             rank=rank,