List of Mentors
The University of Vienna is subdivided into 15 faculties and five centres. Faculties are responsible for research and teaching, while centres fulfil specific tasks for the University or predominantly serve either as research or as teaching bodies.
In the list below you can see which faculties and centres are currently participating in the REWIRE Programme. By clicking on each faculty or centre you can see a list of the mentors involved and which department or institute they are part of.
However, if you do not see any mentors in your research field, we encourage you to reach out to Professors at the University of Vienna who are within your field to find out if they would be willing to host you. You can do this via a Google search, our u:find page or our Current Research Information System u:cris.
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Department of Environmental Geosciences
Prof. Dr. Stephan Kraemer
Head of Department
+43 1 4277 53463
University of Vienna, Althanstrasse 14, 1090 Vienna, Austria
Research Focus:
- Biogeochemistry of plant and microbial nutrient acquisition
- Pollutant dynamics
- Bio-mineral interactions
- Mineral surface chemistry
- DNA-mineral interactions
- Biogeochemistry of redox processes in natural systems
More information can be found at: edge.univie.ac.at
Department of Microbiology and Ecosystem Science
University of Vienna,
Althanstrasse 14,
1090 Vienna
Prof. Dr. Michael Wagner
Director, Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science
+43 1 4277 91200
skype:michidome
twitter: @MichiWagner4
Research Focus:
- Microbial Ecology
- Microbial Interactions
- Single cell methods in Microbial Ecology (advanced FISh techniques, Raman spectroscopy, NanoSIMS)
- Microbiology of the nitrogen cycle (focus on nitrification)
More information can be found at: http://www.microbial-ecology.net
Univ. Prof. Dr. Matthias Horn
Head of Department
+43 1 4277 76608
Research Focus:
- Microbial symbioses, with emphasis on bacterial symbionts of protists and insects
- Evolution and molecular biology of intracellular bacteria
- Microbe‐host interactions
- Microbial genome Evolution
Prof. Dr. David Berry
+43 1 4277 91212
Research Focus:
- Function of the intestinal microbiota in health and disease
- Microbiome and neurodevelopment of premature infants
- Evolution and ecology of gut bacteria
- Novel modeling approaches to study microbial communities
Learn more here: http://www.microbial-ecology.net/people/david-berry
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Holger Daims
+43-1-4277-91204
Research Focus:
- Nitrogen-cycling microorganisms
- Ecophysiology and evolution of nitrite-oxidizing bacteria and complete ammonia oxidizers (comammox)
- Biological wastewater and drinking water treatment
- Molecular and digital imaging methods for studying uncultured microorganisms
Find more information here: http://www.microbial-ecology.net/people/holger-daims
Ass.-Prof. Dr. Christina Kaiser
+43-1-4277-91263
Research Focus:
- Soil as a complex system: emergent behaviour of soil microbial communities
- Microbial ecology at the soil microscale
- Plant-Soil-Microbe interactions (Rhizosphere priming, Mycorrhiza-microbe interactions)
- Combining individual-based ecological modelling with experimental work
Find more information here: http://ter.csb.univie.ac.at/people/christina-kaiser
Prof. Dr. Alexander Loy
+43 1 4277 91205
Research Focus:
- Evolution and ecology of sulfur microorganisms
- Function of the human microbiome in health and disease
- Development of molecular and isotope-labeling methods for studying uncultivated microorganisms in their natural environment
Find more information here: http://www.microbial-ecology.net/people/alexander-loy
Ass.-Prof. Dr. Jillian Petersen
+43-1-4277-91206
Research Focus:
- Host-microbe interactions
- Non-traditional model systems for understanding symbiotic interactions (e.g. marine lucinid bivalves)
- Marine microbial ecology
- Microbial genome evolution
Find further Information here: http://microbial-ecology.net/
Prof. Dr. Thomas Rattei
+43 1 4277 91280
+43 664 60277 91280
Research Focus:
- Computational and systems biology
- Genome and metagenome analysis
- Functional genomics
- Host-pathogen interactions
- Databases and infrastructure for bioinformatics
Find more information here: cube.univie.ac.at
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Andreas Richter
+43-1-4277-91260
Research Focus:
- Carbon use efficiency, growth and turnover of microbial communities
- Arctic soil carbon storage and the permafrost-climate feedback
- Microbial communities, SOM composition and the breakdown of organic matter
- Ecological stoichiometry and nitrogen and phosphorus cycling
- Effect of climate change and elevated CO2 on soil processes
Find further information here: http://ecosystem-science.at/
Ass.-Prof. Dagmar Woebken
+43 1 4277 91213
Research Focus:
- N2-fixing microorganism - diversity and ecology in diverse terrestrial habitats
- Dormancy and resuscitation of soil microorganism
- Plant-microbe interactions
- Application of single-cell activity assays for studying uncultivated microorganisms in terrestrial habitats
Find more Information here: http://www.microbial-ecology.net/people/dagmar-woebken
Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology
Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Biol. Dr. Sascha Martens, Privatdoz.
Head of Department
Max Perutz Labs
University of Vienna
Vienna BioCenter (VBC)
Dr. Bohr-Gasse 9/5
1030 Vienna
+43-1-4277-52876
Research Focus:
In order for our cells to stay healthy and functional, they must identify and dispose of damaged and harmful substances. Autophagy (from the Greek word for self-eating) is a process that cells employ to remove this material so that it can be replaced with new and functional parts. During autophagy cellular substances become engulfed by vesicles, the autophagosomes. How autophagosomes form de novo around their cargos is fascinating, yet still enigmatic. At the end of their biogenesis the vesicles fuse with cellular compartments called lysosomes which degrade the cargo. Autophagy was shown to target a variety of components including protein aggregates, organelles and even invading pathogens after they enter the cytoplasm. Not surprisingly, defects in autophagy have been associated with numerous diseases such as neurodegeneration, cancer and uncontrolled infections.Past research has identified a plethora of factors that are required for autophagy. However, how these factors act together in order to couple the capturing of the cellular material destined for degradation with the formation of autophagosomes is not well understood. Thus, the challenge now is to assign functions and mechanisms to these factors in order to gain a better understanding of how they work together to enable autophagy. We are a multidisciplinary team that focuses on bottom-up approaches to understand how cells form autophagosomes. To this end, we employ biochemical reconstitution, cell biology, light and electron microscopy as well as structural biology approaches. Our long-term goal is to reconstitute autophagy in vitro and compare the outcome to its working in cells. When those two match up we will understand how cells dispose harmful material.
Find more information here:
https://www.maxperutzlabs.ac.at/martens
Department of Chromosome Biology
Max Perutz Laboratories,
University of Vienna,
Dr. Bohr-Gasse 9,
A-1030 Vienna
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Franz Klein
Head of Department
+43-1-4277-56220
Assoz. Prof. Dr. Peter Schlögelhofer
peter.schloegelhofer@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-56240
Research Focus:
Chromosomes are the biologically relevant form of organization of the genome in all known forms of life. Correct transmission of genetic and epigenetic information, genome stability and the production of germ cells during sexual reproduction are key topics in chromosome biology. These subtopics are medically relevant (cancer, ageing, development, fertility, gene therapy), but also have economic importance (breeding). Here we increase our understanding how the genome maintains its stability, replicates, repairs, recombines, and distributes. Research at the Department of Chromosome Biology is taking advantage of the newest technological developments in genetics (e.g. gene editing and modulation), genomics (e.g. single cell and deep long-distance sequencing), imaging (e.g. super resolution in life cells), and biochemistry (e.g. label-free protein quantification by mass spectrometry) to understand the related mechanisms of chromosome structure, repair, recombination and segregation.
Find more information here: https://www.univie.ac.at/chromosomes/
Department of Microbiology, Immunbiology and Genetics
Max Perutz Laboratories,
University of Vienna,
Dr. Bohr-Gasse 9,
A-1030 Vienna
Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Pavel Kovarik
Deputy Head of Department
+43 (1) 427754608
Research Focus:
Our research aims at understanding of how immune homeostasis is maintained and how a robust but not exaggerated immune response is accomplished. Defense against infectious agents and damaging cues requires efficient activation of inflammatory response and timely re-establishment of immune homeostasis once the hostile microbial or sterile cues have been eliminated. Unproductive responses result in infectious disease whereas failures in homeostatic processes cause tissue damage and prevent healing. Thus, inflammatory response needs to be strong but quantitatively and timely restricted. Although many of the inflammation-promoting and –controlling processes are known, the basic question of how these processes are coordinated in the context of balanced tissue-protective immune responses remains poorly understood. We study the molecular wiring of robust yet controlled inflammation at the level of transcription, mRNA decay and signaling.
For more information: http://www.mfpl.ac.at/kovarikhttp://www.viennabiocenter.org/
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Manuela Baccarini
manuela.baccarini@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-54607
Research Focus:
Deciphering the MAPK pathway in vivoCells survive, proliferate, and differentiate by interpreting the signals from the environment and translating them into the right output. If signaling goes awry, even in a few cells, the whole organism is at risk. We focus on signaling by the RAF/MEK/ERK pathway, an evolutionarily conserved kinase module which relays signals through consecutive phosphorylation of proteins arranged in three tiers. Constitutive activation of the pathway is a key event in several human malignancies and developmental disorders. Thus, proteins in this pathway are attractive therapeutic targets.Strikingly, the pathway increases in complexity with evolution - from one paralog in simple organisms to three RAF, two MEK and two ERK paralogs in vertebrates. We investigate the essential roles of RAF and MEK paralogs and have discovered that they are indispensable for pathway cross‐talk, with functional consequences for homeostasis at the molecular, cellular, and organismal level.
For more information: http://www.mfpl.ac.at
Assoz. Prof. Alexander Dammermann, Privatdoz. BA MA PhD
+43-1-4277-54681
Research Focus:
Centrioles are small cytoplasmic structures whose distinguishing feature is an outer wall composed of a nine-fold symmetric array of stabilized microtubules. Centrioles perform two important functions in eukaryotic cells: 1) they form centrosomes that organize the microtubule cytoskeleton and contribute to cell division, and 2) they form cilia, cellular projections that perform critical sensory and motile functions. Reflecting their multiple roles in development and tissue homeostasis, centrosome and cilia abnormalities have been linked to cancer as well as developmental and adult disorders including ciliopathies, dwarfism and microcephaly. Work in my lab seeks to understand the fundamental and conserved molecular mechanisms underlying centriole assembly and their function in centrosome and cilium biogenesis using a combination of biochemical, cell biological and genetic approaches in the nematode C. elegans and the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. For more details see http://www.maxperutzlabs.ac.at/dammermann
Dr. Florian Raible
+43-1-4277-54616
Research Focus:
Stem Cells, Regeneration and Developmental Plasticity
Comparisons across animal groups suggests that stem-cell based regeneration – including regeneration of the central nervous system – is likely an ancestral feature, but has been secondarily lost in mammals and other taxa. Out lab focuses on the study of selected model systems that provide direct experimental access to this process, and allow us to decipher the molecules and mechanisms that orchestrate regeneration. One of these models are annelid worms that are known to modulate regenerative capacity by virtue of brain-derived endocrine factors. Moreover, these brain-derived factors orchestrate various other developmental processes – ranging from bristle shapes to the trigger of reproductive maturation, and even the timing of death. Research into individual factors and their function therefore provides unique experimental and mechanistic access to fascinating and fundamental aspects of biology.
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Kristin Tessmar-Raible
+43 1 4277 74635 (office) +43 1 4277 74636 (lab)
Research Focus:
Biological Timers set by sun and moon
The main interest of my lab is to investigate how solar and lunar light are sensed by the nervous system and how this light information impacts on the animals' information processing and endogenous clocks.
The moon is an important timing cue for numerous marine species, ranging from brown and green algae to corals, worms, fishes and turtles. Such lunar timing typically controls the gonadal maturation and behavioral changes associated with reproductive rhythms. Despite the fundamental nature and widespread occurrence of these lunar-controlled rhythms and oscillators, little is known about their principle molecular mechanisms, their interplay with rhythms and oscillators of different period lengths, or their modulation in changing environments.
The marine bristle worm Platynereis dumerilii and the midge Clunio marinus harbor light-entrained circadian, as well as a monthly (circalunar) clocks and also exhibit seasonal behaviors. Our work in Platynereis suggests that the circalunar clock persists even when circadian clock oscillations are disrupted.
In order to study the molecular and cellular nature of the circalunar clock, as well as its interactions with other timing, Platynereis and Clunio can be used for complementary experimental approaches. For Platynereis techniques, including transgenesis, inducible cell ablations, as well as TALEN/Crispr-Cas-mediated genome engineering provide us with first insights into the genes required for solar vs. lunar light detection.
Linked to our general interest in photoreceptors, we also work on teleost fishes and uncovered the presence of functional opsin photoreceptors in inter- and motorneurons of medaka and zebrafish. We propose that they might function as nature’s own optogenetics.
Department of Structural and Computational Biology
Max Perutz Labs,
University of Vienna,
Campus-Vienna-Biocenter 5,
1030 Vienna
Uni-Prof Dr. Arndt von Haeseler
Head of Centre for Molecular Biology
arndt.von.haeseler@univie.ac.at
+43 1 4277 74307
Research Focus:
Our research interest is the integration of different areas of expertise to answer important biological questions. A special focus lies on the reconstruction of evolutionary history, especially, the development of phylogenetic methods and complex models and their application to large and complex datasets.
Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Kristina Djinovic-Carugo
kristina.djinovic@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-52203
+43-1-4277-52201 (secretary)
Research Focus:
- Structural biology of actin cytoskeleton and muscle Z-disk
- Metallo-enzymes involved in protection from chemical and oxidative damage and ammonium oxidation
- Methods development-Tools for optimization of protein generation and crystallogenesis-Tools for studies of dynamic systems with X-ray scattering and NMR
Ass.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Thomas Juffmann
Quantum Optics, Quantum Nanophysics & Quantum Information Group, Faculty of Physics
Department for Structural and Computational biology, Centre for Molecular Biology (Max Perutz Labs)
+43-1-4277-72520
Research Focus:
- Quantum and Cavity enhanced Imaging
- Sensitivity Limits of Phase Microscopy
- Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging
- Wave-front Shaping of Electrons
- Method Development for Structural Biology
Find more information: https://imaging.univie.ac.at
Austrian Educational Competence Centre Physics
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Martin Hopf
Head of Centre
email: martin.hopf@univie.ac.at
tel: +43-1-4277-60330
University of Vienna
Österreichisches Kompetenzzentrum für Didaktik der Physik
Porzellangasse 4, Stiege 2
1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
The Austrian Educational Competence Centre Physics was founded in 2007. In a framework of Conceptual Change and Design-Based research, we develop and assess Teaching-Learning-Sequences for middle and high school physics classrooms. Large projects of the past focused on the 2D-Dynamics-Curriculum, at the moment we work on students’ learning of radiation. Additionally we have a focus on the development of the PCK of pre-service physics teachers.
Department for Teacher Education
University of Vienna,
Porzellangasse 4,
1090 Vienna
Univ.-Prof. DI Dr. techn. Fares Kayali
+43 1 4277 60050
Research Focus:
Fares Kayali is professor of digital education and learning at the Centre for Teacher Education at the University of Vienna. He is co-founder of the Positive Impact Games Lab and principal investigator of a number of projects situated at the intersection of design, people and technology. His research interests are situated in informatics, didactics, arts and HCI with a broad spectrum covering digital learning, teacher education, health care technology, game design and gamification, as well as music computing and interactive art.
Applications, which focus on the digital transformation (in education) or which focus on the design and didactic embedding of technological learning artefacts (e.g. games, tablet applications, AR, VR, …) are particularly encouraged.
Find more information here: https://lehrerinnenbildung.univie.ac.at/en/
Prof. Dr. Susanne Schwab
+43-1-4277-60022
Research Focus:
Teaching-related basic research
The focus of this area is on basic research into school teaching, which comprises the theory of education and school, as well as the history and systematics of education in the context of cultural history, based on analysis of social science approaches. This area also covers the theoretical foundation of subject didactics, as well as research into individual general aspects of teaching (e.g. classroom interaction).
Research on teacher professionalisation
Here, the focus of research is on the continuum of professionalisation and on drawing up sustainable programmes for the qualification and professionalisation of (future) teachers. This research area also comprises the analysis of professional knowledge (e.g. pedagogical content knowledge and teacher learning), facilitation and control of processes of learning and education, responses to violence, bullying and fear (including clinical/psychological research approaches), as well as school development (educational leadership).
The Centre regards it as its task to devote special attention and dedicate research efforts to certain themes that are relevant across different faculties, and to respond to challenges of educational policy. In this regard, we place special importance on the acquisition of cross-sectional expertise, such as social and personal skills, diagnostic competence, feedback and support skills, prevention of violence, and competence with regard to diversity and specific needs for support (inclusive education).
Teaching-related teaching and learning research
This thematic area primarily covers subject didactics, and particularly subject-related and cross-curricular learning processes in pupils. Its research focuses on subject-related and subject-specific didactic problems of the transformation of subject matter into teaching and learning processes, as well as the analysis and development of teachers’ professional knowledge and practice. The non-subject-related research areas particularly include political studies, language teaching and language learning. Teaching and learning in a situation of diversity and heterogeneity, as well as the challenge of inclusive schooling, are further areas of Research.
Future key topics
In the next few years, new cross-sectional topics will become the focus of interdisciplinary research, taking into account the rapid changes of our globalised knowledge and innovation society.
Key topics will be:
- education processes in the context of migration and globalisation;
- inclusive education;
- changed forms of organisation and structures of schools as a prerequisite for the teaching of tomorrow
- the changes in media technology and their implications for teaching and learning
Find more information here:
https://lehrerinnenbildung.univie.ac.at/en/
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/persons/susanne-schwab(551b4052-a1df-4dda-907c-53f4b484008a).html
Data Science Research Platform
Research Platform Data Science @ Uni Vienna,
Währinger Straße 29,
1090 Vienna
Data Science @ Uni Vienna is a new research platform at the University of Vienna that presents a hub on all activities in data science at the University of Vienna. Our primary focus is to bring researchers from different areas together to work on and solve several of the challenges that this new field presents. To this end we will primarily be driven by application problems whose solution requires novel methodological developments. The main research challenges to be tackled by this research platform can be summarized as (a) application challenges, (b) methodological challenges, and (c) translational challenges. We specifically focus on problems arising in one of the following five domains, Astronomy, Digital Humanities, Finance, Industry 4.0, Medical Sciences. While these areas are broad, they have in common that they are data-driven and use similar methods from computer science, mathematics, and statistics.
Univ.-Prof. Torsten Möller, PhD
Head - Research Platform Data Science @ Uni Vienna
+43-1-4277-79010
Research Platform Data Science @ Uni Vienna, Währinger Straße 29, 1090 Vienna
Research Group Visualization and Data Analysis, Währinger Straße 29, 1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
Torsten Möller is an expert on visual data analysis and has been investigating the visual exploration of data-driven und computational models for nearly a decade. He has been given several keynote talks on this issue and has a number of highly cited papers on the issue. He heads the research group on Visualization and Data Analysis. He served as the appointed Vice Chair for Publications of the IEEE Visualization and Graphics Technical Committee (VGTC) between 2003 and 2012. He has served on a number of program committees and has been papers co-chair for IEEE Visualization, EuroVis, Graphics Interface, and the Workshop on Volume Graphics as well as the Visualization track of the 2007 International Symposium on Visual Computing. He has also co-organized the 2004 Workshop on Mathematical Foundations of Scientific Visualization, Computer Graphics, and Massive Data Exploration as well as the 2010 Workshop on Sampling and Reconstruction: Applications and Advances at the Banff International Research Station, Canada. He is a co-founding chair of the Symposium on Biological Data Visualization (BioVis). In 2010, he was the recipient of the NSERC DAS award. He received best paper awards from IEEE Conference on Visualization (1997), Symposium on Geometry Processing (2008), EuroVis (2010), and ACM Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI, 2016), as well as two second best paper awards from EuroVis (2009, 2012). In 2016 he received the Teaching Award from the University of Vienna.
Univ.-Prof. Joao Alves, PhD
+43-1-4277-53810
Research Focus:
João Alves is a professor of Stellar Astrophysics and researchers on the origins of stars and planets. He has developed a new technique to trace density and mass distribution inside giant molecular clouds, the nurseries of star and planet formation, and is a leader on the structure of stellar embryos and the origin of the observed distribution of stellar masses in the Universe. He has co-authored more than 170 papers in peer-reviewed journals that have amassed more than 10000 citations. João Alves did his PhD thesis work at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He moved in 1999 to Germany to become a European Southern Observatory (ESO) Fellow to Garching. In 2001 he became ESO staff and Head of Visiting Astronomers Section in 2003, where he was in charge of managing the scientific evaluation of ESO proposals and time allocation. In 2006 he moved to Southern Spain to take the directorship of the Max-Planck - CSIC German-Spanish Astronomical Center in Calar Alto. Since 2010, he is full professor for Stellar Astrophysics at the University of Vienna and currently the Dean of the Faculty of Earth Sciences, Geography and Astronomy. He involved in the visualization of the European ESA Gaia satellite mission and in the data simulation from the planned European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT).
Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Tara Andrews
+43-1-4277-40864
Department of History,
Universitätsring 1,
1010 Vienna
Research Focus:
Tara Andrews became University Professor of Digital Humanities at the Institute for History in 2016. With a Bachelor of Science in Humanities and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1999), and the degrees of Master (2005) and Doctor (2009) of Philosophy in Byzantine and Armenian studies from the University of Oxford, her dual scientific training as well as her professional experience in the software industry has provided valuable and rare perspectives on the use of digital and computational methods in humanities domains. Andrews’ fields of expertise include the history and historiography of the Christian Near East in the tenth to twelfth centuries, the application of computational and statistical methods for reconstruction of the copying history of ancient and medieval manuscripts (stemmatology), and reflection on the implications of employing digital media and computational methods in humanities contexts. She has been invited to give keynote presentations at both academic and industry conferences, has contributed to both the Armenian-source content and the technical maintenance of the online “Prosopography of the Byzantine World”, has edited or co-edited two collections of papers on the subject of software and computational analysis in textual studies, and has published several journal articles as well as a monograph on topics that cover both medieval Armenian history and digital scholarly practice. Her scientific output also extends to research software, most notably the ‘Stemmaweb’ suite of online tools for analysis of text variants and their associated stemma hypotheses, but also including a range of smaller tools whose source code has been released to the public on Github.
Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Immanuel Bomze
+43-1-4277-38652
Department of Statistics and Operations Research,
Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1,
1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
The research interests of Immanuel Bomze are in the areas of nonlinear optimization, qualitative theory of dynamical systems, game theory, mathematical modelling and statistics, where he has edited one and published four books, as well as over 100 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals and monographs. Around the turn of the millennium, he coined, together with his co-authors, the now widely used terms “Standard Quadratic Optimization” and “Copositive Optimization” or “Copositive Programming”. Among the manifold applications of this approach are all (fractional) polynomial mixed-integer, and therefore also most Combinatorial optimization problems, which in turn can be used in Analytics, Data Mining and Machine Learning, to name but a few.In 2014 Bomze was elected Fellow of EurOpt, the Continuous Optimization Working Group of the Association of European Operational Research (EURO), for which he currently serves as President-Elect and 2019-20 as the President. In 2016 he co-founded the Vienna Center of Operations Research (VCOR) for which he currently serves as a co-director. As a member of program and/or organizing committees, he co-organized various scientific events and he is an Associate Editor for six international journals. For over ten science foundations and councils and for almost 50 scientific journals he acted as a reporting referee. 2011-2017 he served as Co-Editor in Chief of the European Journal of Operational Research, one of the worldwide leading journals in the field.
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Radu Ioan Bot, Privatdoz.
+43-1-4277-50772
Department of Mathematics,
Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1,
1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
Radu Bot is an expert on nonsmooth optimization. His research interests include theoretical investigations of optimization problems from both continuous and discrete perspectives, in particular their relation to the monotone operator theory, and the design, development and convergence analysis of numerical algorithms for solving nonsmooth and nonconvex optimization problems, mainly motivated by real-life applications. He heads the group on Applied Mathematics and Optimization. He is co-author of a monograph on vector optimization and of a book on duality in convex optimization, both published at Springer, and of 136 peer-reviewed research articles out of which 113 are published in journals and proceedings volumes indexed in the ISI Web of Science. He was principal investigator in several research projects funded by the German Research Foundation and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and is currently principal investigator for standalone research projects and is member of the Vienna Graduate School on Computational Optimization funded by the Austrian Science Fund. He was also involved in cooperation related to data-driven research with German industrial companies. He has given numerous invited and plenary talks at international conferences, has given invited lecture series, has had research stays and has been a member of doctoral and habilitation committees at universities in Austria, France, Germany, Poland, Sweden, and Romania. He serves as Associate Editor for several research journals in the areas of applied mathematics and optimization, including the Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Optimization Letters, Applied Mathematics and Computation, and the prestigious SIAM Journal on Optimization. Currently, he is the Speaker of the Vienna Doctoral School “Mathematics”.
Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Karl Franz Dörner, Privatdoz.
+43-1-4277-37951
Department of Business Decisions and Analytics,
Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1,
1090 Vienna, Room 06.619
Research Focus:
Karl Dörner is professor of business administration with a focus on production and logistics at the University of Vienna. He is an expert in the development of meta- and matheuristic search techniques and multi-agent systems for complex problems in production and logistics. His research focuses on problems in distribution logistics, integrated problems in supply chain management, inventory routing, production routing, and disruption management. He has co-authored more than 70 peer-reviewed scientific publications (more than 40 papers in peer-reviewed journals) mainly in the field of transportation logistics. He serves as area editor for distribution logistics in the journal flexible services and manufacturing systems. Dörner received his doctoral degree from the University of Vienna in 2001. From 2000 to 2007 he joined the department of business administration at the University of Vienna. From 2007-2008 he was senior researcher at Salzburg Research, from 2008-2009 substitute professor at the University of Hamburg, 2009-2010 assistant professor at the University of Vienna. 2011-2014 head of the institute for production and operations management at the Johannes Kepler University Linz. Since 2013 he is also the head of the Christian Doppler laboratory on efficient intermodal transportation located at the University of Vienna.
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Philipp Grohs
+43-1-4277-55741
Department of Mathematics,
Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1,
1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
Philipp Grohs received a Master's degree in Mathematics from the Technical University of Vienna in 2006 and a doctoral degree in Applied Mathematics from the Technical University of Vienna in 2007. From 2011 to 2016 he was a (non-TT) Assistant Professor at ETH Zurich and currently he is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Vienna. His research interests are in Signal Processing, Numerical Analysis, Computational Harmonic Analysis, Machine Learning and Computational Geometry. Recently he has made important contributions towards an understanding of deep learning algorithms. His research has been disseminated in the form of more than 60 articles in the highest rated journals in the fields of applied mathematics and machine learning. He has given several invited addresses; recent highlights include a keynote address at the Deep Learning Workshop 2017, a plenary address at the Curves and Surfaces conference 2018, and a plenary address at the highly prestigious FoCM2020 conference. He is co-organizer of several workshops, among them an Oberwolfach workshop on Nonlinear Data or the Oberwolfach Seminar on The Mathematics of Deep Learning, both held in 2018. In 2014 he became the first mathematician in 30 years to receive the interdisciplinary ETH Latsis Prize. Since 2017 he serves on the editorial board of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Hautsch
+43-1-4277-38680
Department of Statistics and Operations Research,
Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1,
1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
Nikolaus Hautsch is Professor of Finance and Statistics at the University of Vienna since 2013. He is an expert on financial econometrics and the analysis of high-frequency data. His research focuses, among others, on the estimation of asset return volatility and highdimensional covariance matrices using high-frequency data, empirical market microstructure analysis, systemic risk in financial networks and statistical techniques for risk management. He wrote and co-edited several books and publishes in leading journals in the area of finance, econometrics and statistics. Hautsch is elected fellow of the Society for Financial Econometrics, and research fellow of the Center for Financial Studies (CFS), Frankfurt. He serves on the editorial board of several leading academic journals. Hautsch had visiting positions at the University of Technology, Sydney, the University of Melbourne, the Université Catholique de Louvain, the University of Cambridge, and Duke University. He co-organized a number conferences in the area of financial econometrics, and served on many program committees. He acquired several research grants, and participated in a number of externally funded research networks. Hautsch received his Ph.D. in 2003 from the University of Konstanz. From 2004 to 2007 he joined the Department of Economics of the University of Copenhagen. Until 2013 he held the Chair of Econometrics at Humboldt University Berlin and was director of the Berlin Doctoral Program in Economics and Management Science.
Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Hannes Leeb
+43-1-4277-38620
Department of Statistics and Operations Research,
Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1,
1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
Hannes Leeb is developing and analyzing statistical methods based on model-selection and shrinkage-type estimators, with a particular focus on scenarios where the sample size is small in relation to the number of parameters in the data-generating process. His results have been published in top tier statistics journals, including the Annals of Statistics, The Journal of The Royal Statistical Society Ser. B., and The Journal of The American Statistical Association. Also, he has been invited to present his results at numerous international conferences like the Joint Statistical Meetings, the IMS Annual Meetings, or the Sessions of the International Statistical Institute. He has co-organized the Vienna workshops on model selection and related problems, in 2008 and 2011.
Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Inform.Univ. Dr. Claudia Plant
+43-1-4277-79510
Research Group Data Mining,
Währinger Straße 29,
1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
Claudia Plant is an expert in knowledge discovery from databases and data mining. Her recent research areas are information-theoretic approaches to exploratory data analysis, high-performance data mining supported by modern hardware such as graphic processing units and data mining in the context of biomedical applications. She has been contributing many papers to selective data mining conferences, among them over 25 papers presented at the ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining and at the IEEE ICDM International Conference on Data Mining which are the top-level conferences of the field. She received the Best Paper Award of the ICDM 2014 conference and has two further Best Paper Awards (IGI Global, ICDM biomedical workshop). The results of interdisciplinary projects with experts from biology, medicine, neuroscience and environmental sciences have been published in the leading application-related journals, e.g. Cerebral Cortex and Water Research. From 2009 to 2011 she has been organizing the workshop “Database Technology for Life Science and Medicine” in conjunction with Int. Conf. for Database and Expert Systems Applications. In 2013 she received a Helmholtz Young Investigators Grant which is a highly selective program of the German Helmholtz Association providing funding of 1.5 Mio. € for an independent research group.
Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Math. oec. Dr. Stefanie Rinderle-Ma
stefanie.rinderle-ma@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-79110
Research Group Workflow Systems and Technology,
Währinger Straße 29,
1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
Stefanie Rinderle-Ma is full professor and head of the research group Workflow Systems and Technology at the Faculty of Computer Science. Her expertise is on process-oriented information systems, business intelligence, and compliance and security in process-aware applications. Stefanie has co-authored the book on Fundamentals of Business Intelligence (together with W. Grossmann) which has been downloaded approx.. 24.000 times since 2015 7 . In her research, Stefanie has focused on advanced process mining techniques and data quality and integration techniques for various applications. This work was funded by several projects, for example, a cluster project with the Medical University of Vienna on process mining and compliance in skin cancer treatment as well as an FFG-funded project on process mining in smart grid environments. In addition to these application areas Stefanie has gained expertise in Industry4.0 and Cyber-Physical Systems based on, for example, the FP7 EU project ADVENTURE on process-oriented manufacturing networks. Moreover, she participates as research partner in the recently started Comet Center for Digital Production (CDP).
Department of Systematic Theology and Ethics
Univ.-Prof. MMMag. DDr. Kurt Appel
+43-1-4277-30302
Faculty for Catholic Theology
Department of Systematic Theology and Ethics
Schenkenstraße 8-10
1010 Vienna
Research Focus:
The research interests that my colleagues and I pursue in the discipline of fundamental theology at the University of Vienna fall under the areas of Eschatology/Philosophy of History and of Theodicy/Philosophy of Religion within the schema of classical theology/philosophy. Nevertheless, this very schema has become inadequate, as the clearly delineated religious worlds and their corresponding theological terminology have either been transformed or simply exhausted. Therefore, contemporary theology must forge relationships with other disciplines (philosophy, literary studies, physics, the social sciences, etc.) and create new space for a questioning oriented toward the original social-political and mystical task of theology, namely a critique of culture, cognition, and religion. Within this context, fi ve questions emerge as leading themes as part of a larger project of developing a new humanism. Interested parties of all disciplines are invited to participate in this project, e.g., in the form of dissertation and diploma projects. The background to this project is the diagnosis that, given the current situation in which humanity itself is at stake (the extinction of the diversity of life and languages, the loss of memory, the virtualization of the life-world, the replacement of humans with technological and biological machines), there is a need for a new approach to the human in its singularity, vulnerability, and indispensability. Intimately related to this view is the search for a disclosure of possible horizons of the meaning of history, both in perceiving its disruptions and in affi rming the richness of narratives and ways of life. In this quest, Christianity is especially entrusted with the task of developing a critical awareness of the disconcerting (not assimilable) dimension of the DIVINE, from whose creative and hospitable texts and signatures the history of life emerges.
Leading Theme:
Christianity as a Project for a New Humanism: Disclosure of the Meaning of History in the Hospitable Textures of the DIVINE
The Five Questions:
APOCALYPSE or the question concerning the essence of time
HEGEL or the question of the concealed humane
GOD or the question concerning the ultimate question
EUROPE or the question concerning the hospitable reception of plurality
RESURRECTION or the question concerning the gift of mortality
Further information:
https://st-tgf-ktf.univie.ac.at/
https://www.religionandtransformation.at/
Department of Biological Chemistry
University of Vienna,
Währinger Str. 38
1090 Vienna
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Christian Becker
Head of Department
+43-1-4277-70510
Research Focus:
The Institute of Biological Chemistry (IBC) at the University of Vienna is a center for peptide and protein chemistry established in 2011. Its main focus is on generating tailor-made peptides and proteins for chemical biology as well as for biomedical research with a special focus on studying posttranslational modifications of proteins. To achieve this, the IBC is well-equipped for synthetic chemistry and for molecular biology. The IBC is part of the Department of Chemistry that, with its young and diverse faculty, offers a highly attractive environment for researchers from around the world. It is one of the largest postgraduate training centers in Austria and is well complemented by strong career development programs of the University of Vienna.
Find more information here: http://biologischechemie.univie.ac.at
Ass. Prof. Dr. Dennis Kurzbach
+43-1-4277-70523
Research Focus:
The nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) research group of the university Vienna focuses on combining dissolution dynamic nuclear polarization (dDNP), a technique to boost signal intensities in NMR spectra, with time-resolved detection of biomolecular interaction events on milliseconds to minutes time-scales. Our very interdisciplinary research programme combines biochemical and biophysical research with instrumentational and cutting-edge methodological developments of NMR and dDNP technology.The laboratory is equipped with 7 state-of-the-art NMR devices and targets methods that shed light on the interactions of intrinsically disordered proteins with bio-minerals. Our aim is to describe biomineralization events at an atomistic level in real-time. The NMR team is part of the Institute of Biological Chemistry and of the Department of Chemistry that, with its young and diverse faculty, offers a highly attractive environment for researchers from around the world. It is one of the largest postgraduate training centers in Austria and is well complemented by strong career development programs of the University of Vienna.
Find more information here: www.Vienna-DNP.at
Assoz. Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Markus Muttenthaler, PhD
markus.muttenthaler@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-70515
Research Focus:
Neuropeptides are key mediators in many biological functions and understanding of their interaction with target proteins is fundamental to unravel the underlying mechanism of diseases. Over the years, an increasing number of bioactive peptides from animals, plants, and bacteria have been characterised, with the overwhelming realisation that these molecules often show better therapeutic performance than their human counterparts, particularly in terms of in vivo stability. Our main research efforts situated in this area of Chemical Biology focus on the exploration and translation of these vast and untapped natural libraries towards the development of useful research tools and therapeutics. Solid phase peptide synthesis, the main tool to access these compounds, is a powerful technology for the assembly and chemical modification of these highly chiral and structurally complex peptides. We then use these ligands to develop advanced molecular probes and therapeutic leads to address important questions of unmet medical need. The oxytocin and vasopressin system in health and disease, the role of the trefoil factor peptides in gastrointestinal disorder, the study of neuropeptide involvement in long-term memory formation and the mining of animal venom for drug discovery are current topics investigated by our group.
Find more information here: https://www.neuropeptidelab.com/
Department of Food Chemistry and Toxicology
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Doris Marko
Head of Department
+43-1-4277-70800
Währinger Str. 38
1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
The Institute of Food Chemistry and Toxicology at the University of Vienna is well established at the interface of bioactivity and food safety. The main focus is on the elucidation of molecular mechanisms of food constituents and their potential combinatory effects, including the potential interplay of food bioactives, contaminants and chemotherapeutics. Mechanistic studies are supported by sophisticated analytics of cellular uptake, distribution, metabolism and excretion. The interdisciplinary team brings together researchers from food chemistry, analytical chemistry, biophysical imaging, toxicology and microbiology. The institute is well equipped and provides a highly attractive interdisciplinary environment for the career development of young researchers.
Find more information here: https://lmc.univie.ac.at/
Department of Inorganic Chemistry - Functional Materials
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Freddy Kleitz
Head of Department
+43-1-4277-52902
Währinger Str. 42
1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
Our research activities concentrate mainly on the development of materials exhibiting well-defined pores in a range of size below 100 nm, i.e. nanoporous materials, and the study of their physicochemical properties and potential applications. In particular, the Kleitz laboratory is working on the design of functional microporous/mesoporous inorganic and organic-inorganic hybrid materials and exploring their properties as selective sorbents (water treatment, extraction chromatography), as heterogeneous catalysts, and biomedical materials (drug delivery and bioimaging). This includes the synthesis and characterization of nanoporous oxides and silicates obtained via templating methods, and the preparation of inorganic-organic hybrids through chemical functionalization strategies. In addition to technological aspects, the research provides fundamental understanding of host-guest interactions within nanopores, confinement effects, and transport phenomena at the nanoscale.
Department of Physical Chemistry
University of Vienna
Waehringer Strasse 42
1090 Vienna
https://pchem.univie.ac.at/en/
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Peter A. Lieberzeit
Head of Department
+43 1 4277 52341
Research Focus:
The working group of Chemical Sensors and Rapid Analysis at the Department of Physical Chemistry focuses on developing novel, highly selective recognition materials for both artifcial and biological targets. The main synthesis routes for that purpose rely on self-assembly of target species with monomers or compounds that selectively interact with them, such as e.g. single strand DNA. The aim is to use those artificial receptors for developing sensors and selective filters. The former mainly comprise mass-sensitive transducers, such as quartz crystal microbalances (QCM), but also electrochemical or optical (Raman, SPR, Fluorescence) detection. The group has earned itself appreciable reputation in its field of work and is thus embedded into a highly international environment.
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Ellen Backus
+43-1-4277-52440
Research Focus:
The research in my group currently focusses on understanding the structure and dynamics of interfacial water. Amongst others, the properties of water adjacent to hard and soft interfaces are relevant for applications in electrochemistry, folding of macromolecules, and catalysis. In order to study selectively water molecules at interfaces, we use nonlinear optical spectroscopic techniques. With time-resolved vibrational nonlinear optical methods, we study reaction mechanisms on sub-picosecond timescales. A current example is the photocatalytic splitting of water on a titanium dioxide electrode.
Department of Theoretical Chemistry
University of Vienna
Währinger Str. 17
1090 Vienna
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Leticia Gonzalez Herrero
Head of Department
+43-1-4277-52750
Research Focus:
- Photocatalysis, solar energy conversion, DNA photostability, DNA photodamage and photodynamical therapy.
- Quantum chemistry
- Computational photochemistry
- Computational spectroscopy and ultrafast dynamics
For more information see: http://www.itc.univie.ac.at/
ao. Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Christoph Flamm
+43-1-4277-52739
Research Focus:
- Structure and dynamics of biochemical reaction networks.
- Rule-based modeling approaches for biochemical reaction networks.
- Computational design of functional RNA molecules.
- Discrete energy landscapes and RNA folding kinetics.
Find more information here: https://www.tbi.univie.ac.at/~xtof/
Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Phys. Dr. Ivo Hofacker
+43-664-60277-52738
Research Focus:
- RNA Computational Biology.
- RNA Bioinformatics.
- RNA 2D-3D structure prediction.
- Development of Algorithms RNA Bioinformatics.
Find more information here: https://www.tbi.univie.ac.at/
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Philipp Marquetand
philipp.marquetand@univie.ac.at
t+43 1 4277 52764
Research Focus:
Philipp Marquetand is an expert on machine learning in theoretical chemistry. His research focuses on machine learning for the prediction of electronic energies, forces, and other molecular properties with the aim of highly accurate dynamics simulations. He is also interested in conventional on-the-fly ab initio molecular dynamics with emphasis on nonadiabatic dynamics and is one of the developers of the so-called SHARC code (see sharc-md.org). Other research interests comprise simulations of multiphoton ionization and time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy.
Find more information here: http://marquetand.net/ https://theochem.univie.ac.at/
Research Group Data Mining
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Claudia Plant
Head of Research Group Data Mining
+43-1-4277-79510
Research Group Data Mining, Währinger Straße 29, 1090 Vienna
Research Platform Data Science @ Uni Vienna, Währinger Straße 29, 1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
New methods for exploratory data analysis:
- generalization of methods and integration of data
- indexing and scalable data mining methods for parallel hardware
The DM group focuses on new methods for exploratory data mining, e.g., clustering, anomaly detection, graph mining and matrix factorization. Many approaches relate unsupervised learning to data compression, i.e. the better the found patterns compress the data the more information we have learned. Other methods rely on finding statistically independent patterns or multiple non-redundant solutions, on ensemble learning or on nature-inspired concepts such as synchronization. Indexing techniques and methods for parallel hardware support exploring massive data.
Research Group Theory and Applications of Algorithms
Faculty of Computer Science,
Währinger Straße 29,
1090 Vienna
Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Wilfried Gansterer, M.Sc.
Dean - Faculty of Computer Science
Deputy Head - Research Group Theory and Applications of Algorithms
email: wilfried.gansterer@univie.ac.at
tel: +43-1-4277-78311
Research Focus:
Wilfried Gansterer’s general research interests are in high performance computing, parallel and distributed computing, as well as in related problems arising in machine learning and Internet security. Currently, his group focusses on fault tolerance and resilience for numerical algorithms, on accuracy-performance trade-offs in randomized numerical linear algebra algorithms, and on the effects of reduced precision in machine learning algorithms.
Research Group Software Architecture
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Uwe Zdun
Head - Research Group Software Architecture
+43-1-4277-78510
Research Focus:
Prof. Dr. Uwe Zdun is a full professor for software architecture at the Faculty of Computer Science, University of Vienna. Before that, he worked as assistant professor at the Vienna University of Technology and the Vienna University of Economics respectively. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Essen in 2002. His research focuses on software design and architecture, empirical software engineering, distributed systems engineering (service-based, cloud, mobile, IoT, microservices, and process-driven systems), DevOps and continuous delivery, software patterns, domain-specific languages, and model-driven development. Uwe has published more than 220 articles in peer-reviewed journals, conferences, book chapters, and workshops, and is co-author of the books "Remoting Patterns – Foundations of Enterprise, Internet, and Realtime Distributed Object Middleware", "Process-Driven SOA – Proven Patterns for Business-IT Alignment", and "Software-Architektur." He has participated in 27 R&D projects. Uwe is editor of the journal Transactions on Pattern Languages of Programming (TPLoP) published by Springer, Associate Editor of the Computing journal published by Springer, and Associate Editor-in-Chief for design and architecture for the IEEE Software magazine. More can be found at:
https://cs.univie.ac.at/Uwe.Zdun
Research Group Workflow Systems and Technology
Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Math. oec. Dr. Stefanie Rinderle-Ma
Head of Research Group
stefanie.rinderle-ma@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-79110
Research Group Workflow Systems and Technology, Währinger Straße 29, 1090 Vienna
Research Platform Data Science @ Uni Vienna, Währinger Straße 29, 1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
- flexible and distributed process technology
- business intelligence and process mining
- digitalized compliance management
The WST group aims at fundamental research with an application perspective. For the latter several exciting options exist, including the manufacturing domain (as scientific partner of the Austrian Center of Digital Production), care and health care, as well as emerging areas such as blockchain technology (as scientific partner of the Austrian Blockchain Center).
Department of Astrophysics
Tuerkenschanzstr. 17
1180 Vienna
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Manuel Guedel
Head of Department
Head of Research Group on Star and Planet Formation and Habitability
+43-1-4277-53814
Research Focus:
Research Group on Star and Planet Formation and Habitability
Research on the origin and evolution of stars and planets has evolved to one of the major attractions in astrophysical research. The star formation process in molecular clouds leads to protoplanetary disks in which various physical and chemical processes drive planet formation and growth. Supported by the rapid detection of a variety of exoplanets, numbered over 4000 by now, this research area has fostered much theoretical development, new observational opportunities but also the development of premier ground- and space-based observatories.
Our team is specifically interested in the physics and chemical processing in protostellar/protoplanetary disks, their outflows, their accretion, and their dispersal due to the influence of the central star. Our second, related major focus is on the subsequent evolution of terrestrial planets and specifically their evolution toward habitable planets. We investigate how astrophysical factors (the solar/stellar output, the interplanetary environment, the planetary magnetospheres) influence the evolution of planetary atmospheres and potentially make them habitable. This research also includes multidisciplnary collaborations including geologists and atmospheric scientists. It uses observations and numerical simulations of stellar magnetic fields, solar wind-atmosphere interactions, and planetary atmospheres for solar-system planets and exoplanets.
These research activities are supported by a national research project on planet formation and habitability supported by FWF, FFG, and the EU. The group is also involved in the development of relevant future observatories such as the ESO ELT and ESA’s missions of PLATO, CHEOPS, ARIEL, SMILE, Athena, and (with NASA) the James Webb Space Telescope.
For more information: https://www.univie.ac.at/stars/?page_id=6
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Glenn van de Ven
Chair Theoretical Extragalactic Astrophysics
+43 1 4277 53806
Research Focus:
The research in my group focuses on the dynamics of stellar systems, ranging from the Milky Way and its surrounding globular clusters and dwarf satellites, to nearby galaxies across the Hubble sequence. By constructing advanced dynamical models that fit the photometric and spectroscopic observations of these stellar systems in detail, we are able to infer their luminous and dark matter distribution as well as to uncover the 'fossil record' of their formation history.
For more information: www.univie.ac.at/dynamics/
Department of Geography and Regional Research
Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. PD Michaela Trippl
Deputy-Head of Department
+43-1-4277-48720
Universitaetsstrasse 7,
1010 Vienna
Research Focus:
Research at the Department of Geography and Regional Research is organised in seven working groups, covering Economic Geography, Applied Geography, Population Geography, Didactics of Geography, Cartography & Geoinformation, Geomorphology and Geoecology.
Research focus of the working group Economic Geography at the Department of Geography and Regional Research
At the core of our research are spatial aspects of economic activity and innovation based socio-economic transformation processes. We especially focus on issues related to the geographical configuration of and interplay between technological, institutional and social innovation, sustainability transitions, disparities in regional development as well as regional and innovation policies.
Our research themes comprise:
- Geography of innovation with a special focus on disruptive innovation and institutional dynamics
- Geography of sustainability transitions
- Regional structural change, industrial dynamics and diversification
- Mobility and migration of qualified people
- Innovation-based integration processes in cross-border regions
- Regional innovation and industrial policies
Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Geogr. Dr. Patrick Sakdapolrak, MA
patrick.sakdapolrak@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-48730
Research Focus:
We pursue theoretically-founded and empirically-informed research at the interface of population dynamics, environmental change and social transformation processes. With our research we want to contribute to a better understanding of human-environment relationships, with a critical discussion of the relationship between global North and South. Our regional focus is South Asia, South-East Asia and East Africa. We seek to do excellent practice-relevant research.
Department of Palaeontology
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Petra Heinz
University of Vienna
Althanstraße 14,
A - 1090 Wien
+43-1-4277-53580
Research Focus:
We reconstruct marine ecosystems using micropaleontological, ecological and biological investigations on benthic foraminifera. Foraminifera are particularly sensitive to changes in their environment, which leads to varying faunal composition, abundance, diversity and distribution. Therefore, the analysis of (fossil) foraminiferal communities can provide important information about environmental factors influencing this community such as food availability, oxygen content, water depth, temperature, or salinity. We use classical micropaleontological approaches like the investigation of sediment cores, which includes light and scanning electron microscopy, taxonomic identification of species and their quantitative analysis. These methods are complemented by experimental studies to expand our knowledge about foraminiferal ecological demands and their response to environmental variations. One focus of our experimental work are feeding experiments using 13C and 15N-labelled food to study and estimate carbon and nitrogen fluxes under different environmental conditions.
For more information: https://www.univie.ac.at/Palaeontologie/INDEX1_EN.html
Department of Art History
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Raphael Rosenberg
raphael.rosenberg@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-41420
Spitalgasse 2, Hof 9 (Campus),
1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
Italian Renaissance art, Nineteenth-century art in France, History of abstraction, History of art literature and art reception, Cognitive research in art history.
Find more information here: https://kunstgeschichte.univie.ac.at/en/
Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies
Univ.-Prof. Dr. phil. habil. Maria Stassinopoulou
Head of Department
maria.stassinopoulou@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-41009 or 41001
Postgasse 7/1/3,
1010 Vienna
Research Focus:
Modern Greek History in the context of Southeast European History, History of Ideas and Cultural Transfer from the 18th to the 20th century, Migration History, Film Studies
Department of Classical Archaeology
University of Vienna
Franz Klein Gasse 1
1190 Vienna
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Günther Schörner, M.A.
Head of Department
guenther.schoerner@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-40615
Research Focus:
Roman rural landscapes, Roman rituals and their representation, theory and practice of survey archaeology, urban-rural relations in the Roman Empire, culture contact studies, materiality of Roman religious practices.
Find more information here: https://klass-archaeologie.univie.ac.at/
Department of Contemporary History
Prof. Dr. Claudia Kraft
0043-1-4277-41207
Campus Altes AKH, Hof 1, Eingang 1.13, Spitalgasse 2-4
A-1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
The history of Central and Eastern Europe in the 20th century, Women's and Gender History, Politics of History and Cultures of Remembrance, History of Forced Migration, History of State Socialism in Central and Eastern Europe after World War II, transnational legal history in the first half of the 20th century.
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Kerstin von Lingen
kerstin.von.lingen@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-41216
Research Focus:
War and Conflict, Forced Labour, Genocide, International Trials, Memory and Identity
Department of East European History
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Kerstin Susanne Jobst, Privatdoz. M.A.
Head of Department
kerstin.susanne.jobst@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-41117
Spitalgasse 2, Hof 3 (Campus),
1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
East European History with a special emphasis on Eastern Central Europe, Russia, the Black Sea and the Ukraine Gender History History of Empire Histories of Disasters
Department of European Ethnology
University of Vienna
Hanuschgasse 3
1010 Vienna
Prof. Dr. Alexa Färber
+43-1-4277-44012
Research Focus:
Alexa Färber is Professor at the Department of European Ethnology. The research areas and working groups she is part of cover the areas of urban anthropology, knowledge anthropology and visual research. Her longterm and overarching research is concerned with the cultural analysis of the promise in modern societies.
Department of History
University of Vienna
Universitätsring 1
1010 Vienna
Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Tara Andrews
Deputy Head of Department
+43-1-4277-40864
Research Focus:
Tara Andrews is University Professor of Digital Humanities at the Institute for History. Her fields of expertise include the history and historiography of the Christian Near East in the tenth to twelfth centuries, the application of computational and statistical methods for reconstruction of the copying history of ancient and medieval manuscripts (stemmatology), and reflection on the implications of employing digital media and computational methods in humanities contexts.
Prof. Peter Becker
Deputy Head of Department
+43 1 4277 27288
Research Focus:
- History of State and Governance
- History of Institutions (esp. Public Administration)
- History of Scientific and Administrative Practices
- History of Police and Criminology
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Anna Echterhölter
anna.echterhoelter@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-40865
Research Focus:
- History of Science in the 18th and 19th century
- Historical Epistemology
- History of Data and Quantification
- History of Metrication in the Pacific (German colonialism)
- Technological History of Money, Tokens and Measures
More information: https://fsp-wissenschaftsgeschichte.univie.ac.at/home/
ao. Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Meta Niederkorn
+43-1-4277-40824
Research Focus:
- Paleography, (Writing, reading and using books - Medieval Libraries)
- History of Universities - Careers between Universities and monasteries –
Scientific networking of scholars - Comparative History of Religious orders
- Sacralizing space by Liturgy – Liturgical Space and Music
Find more information here: https://ufind.univie.ac.at/de/person.html?id=3841
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Dorothea Nolde
+43 1 4277 40839
Research Focus:
- Early Modern History
- History of Diplomacy and Cultural Contact
- History of Violence
- Gender History
Ass.-Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Röhrlich
elisabeth.roehrlich@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-40830
Research Focus:
- History of international organizations;
- history of the Cold War;
- history of the nuclear age;
- 19th and 20th century global and international history;
- Austrian contemporary history
Department of Numismatics and Monetary History
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Reinhard Wolters
Head of Department
+43-1-4277-40704
Franz-Klein-Gasse 1
1190 Vienna
Research Focus:
- Ancient Numismatics;
- Monetary History;
- Coin Finds;
- Roman History;
- Ancient Germany and Rome
Find more information here:
https://numismatik.univie.ac.at/en/news-events/news/
Institute of Austrian Historical Research
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Thomas Winkelbauer
Head of Institute
thomas.winkelbauer@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-27210
Universitätsring 1
1010 Vienna
Research Focus:
- the political, administrative, financial, social and cultural history of the Habsburg Monarchy from the 16th century to the first half of the 19th century and
- the history of manorial administration and the relationship between noble and ecclesiastical landlords and their peasant subjects in Lower Austria and Moravia from the 16th century to 1848.
Find more information here:
https://geschichtsforschung.univie.ac.at/ueber-uns/personen/winkelbauer-thomas/
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Christina Lutter
+43 1 4277 27290
Research Focus:
Medieval and early modern cultural and gender history, especially
- Entangled monastic, urban, and courtly cultures
- Visions and practices of community
- Representations of emotions.
Find more information here:
http://geschichtsforschung.univie.ac.at/ueber-uns/personen/lutter-christina/
https://viscom.ac.at/projects/late-medieval-central-europe/project/
Department of European, International and Comparative Law
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Ebrahim Afsah
Schottenbastei 10-16,
A-1010 Vienna
Research Focus:
Ebrahim Afsah is Professor of Islamic Law in Vienna, with a secondary appointment as Associate Professor of International Law at the University of Copenhagen. His research focus is comparative public law, including administrative and constitutional law, in Muslim-majority societies, and public international law, especially that pertaining to the region and the critical engagement with postulated alternative visions, such as Third World Approaches to International Law and Islamic International Law. A particular interest are institutional transfers, especially in the context of post-conflict state-building and legal reform.
Find more information here: https://eur-int-comp-law.univie.ac.at/
Department of Innovation and Digitalisation in Law
Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Nikolaus Forgó
Head of Department
+43-1-4277-34202
Schenkenstraße 8-10/4
1010 Vienna
Research Focus:
The Department of Innovation and Digitalisation in Law is a newly founded research and teaching institution at the University of Vienna's law school. We particulary deal with legal questions surrounding IT/IP from a European perspective, with an emphasis on data protection, copyright, e-commerce and consumer protection law, but also focussing on innovations in the legal professional field.
Department of Legal Philosophy
Univ.Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Holzleithner
Head of Department
elisabeth.holzleithner@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-35804
Schenkenstraße 8-10/4
1010 Vienna
Research Focus:
- Legal and Political Philosophy
- Legal Gender & Queer Studies
- Law, Literature and Popular Culture
Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research
Division of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany
Rennweg 14
1030 Vienna
Austria
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Christian Lexer
Deputy-Head of Department
Head of Division of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany
+43-1-4277-54141
Ao. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Irmgard Greilhuber
Irmgard.greilhuber@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-54050
Assoc.-Prof. Dr. Ovidiu Paun
+43-1-4277-54057
Assoc.-Prof. Dr. Gerald M. Schneeweiss
Gerald.schneeweiss@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-54062
Assoc.-Prof. Dr. Hanna Schneeweiss
Hanna.schneeweiss@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-54159
Research Focus:
Research at the Division of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany is concerned with (i) uncovering and identifying patterns of plant and fungal diversity at various levels and with (ii) reaching a solid understanding of the ecological, evolutionary and molecular mechanisms underlying the origin and maintenance of this diversity. To this end we use a broad conceptual basis and draw from a variety of methodologies rooted in evolutionary and ecological genomics, cytogenetics, chemodiversity, systematics and biogeography of plants and fungi. Combining these approaches enables us to tackle some of the currently most pressing questions concerning the origin, loss, and maintenance of biological diversity in plants and fungi at all relevant spatial, temporal, taxonomic, and hierarchical / organismal scales. We have ample experience in mentoring Post-Doc researchers, e.g., via Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions or extramurally funded research projects.
Find more information here: https://systematic-and-evolutionary-botany.univie.ac.at/
Department of Cognitive Biology
Althanstraße 14 (UZA I)
1090 Vienna
Austria
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Thomas Bugnyar
+43 664 60277 76112
Research focus:
Animal cognition; communication and social behaviour
Univ.-Prof. Dott. Leonida Fusani, MPhil PhD
+43-1-4277-76113
Althanstraße 14
1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
The Department of Cognitive Biology favours a new approach to the study of cognition and communication, in both animals and humans, with firm roots in classical ethology, traditional cognitive science, and behavioural physiology. This approach is pluralistic, and follows Tinbergen's injunction to study any given biological trait from the multiple perspectives of phylogeny (evolutionary history), ontogeny (developmental history), mechanisms (cognitive, neural and hormonal physiology) and function (adaptation). We are strongly committed to experimental evaluation of multiple, testable hypotheses. Both careful and controlled lab experiments, and empirical study of animals in their natural environments, are considered crucial to a complete understanding of most behavioural traits. Thus, we often combine field work with laboratory work, and we attempt to combine the naturalist's eye for species-typical behaviour with the psychologist's search for shared cognitive mechanisms and the physiologist’s approach to unveil mechanisms underlying behaviour.
Department of Evolutionary Anthropology
Assoz. Prof. Ron Pinhasi, PhD
+43-1-4277-54721
Althanstraße 12-14
1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
Our research is focusing on human paleogenomics spanning from archaic Homo sapiens and Neanderthals to Early modern humans from Asia and Europe, and the migrations and colonisation of Eurasia, Africa, and the Pacific by modern humans during the last 12,000 years. We have published several papers in high impact journals (Nature, Science, Cell) as part of our collaboration with Harvard Medical School, and other teams. We are also focusing on the study of ancient DNA from sediments and speleothems from caves, pathogen ancient DNA, and the study of the genomic changes among ancient and extant great apes, and some of the livestock animals The team consists of 4 postdoctoral researchers two PhD students, several MA students and technicians.
For more information: http://www.anthropology.at/research/facilities/ancient-dna-lab/
Department of Limnology and Bio-Oceanography
Univ. Prof. Dr. Christian Griebler
Head of Department
christian.griebler@univie.ac.at
+43 1 4277 76416
Althanstrasse 14, 1090 Wien
Research Focus:
The Division of Limnology at the Department of Limnology & Bio-Oceanography holds a designated expertise in ecology of inland waters. Our interests cover all types of aquatic ecosystems such as lakes, rivers and streams, and groundwater. In our research we study the composition and turnover of organic matter, the composition and distribution of microbial communities in space and time, microbially mediated biogeochemical processes, as well as the diversity and autecology of different algae, invertebrates and fish. In face of the severe pressures from global and climate change, we dedicate much of our activities to the evaluation of current and future effects to carbon and nutrient cycles, the emmission of greenhouse gases, physiological adaptations of organisms, and the invasion and replacement of individual species.
Department of Molecular Evolution and Development
Faculty of Life Sciences
Althanstrasse 14
1090 Wien
Univ. Prof. Ulrich Technau
Head of Department of Molecular Evolution and Development
+43-1-4277-57000
Research Focus:
- EvoDevo of cnidarians and other marine invertebrates:
- germ layer formation
- axis formation
- stem cells, regeneration and neurogenesis
Comparative genomics:
- genomic architecture
- gene regulatory networks
- epigenetics
Ass. Prof. Oleg Simakov
+43-1-4277-57020
Research Focus:
Comparative genomics
- metazoan genomic architecture
- synteny conservation
- transposable Elements
Department of Nutritional Sciences
University of Vienna
Althanstraße 14 (UZA II),
1090 Vienna
Prof. Dr. Karl-Heinz Wagner
Deputy Head Department of Nutritional Sciences
Head - Research Platform Active Ageing
+43 1 4277 54930
karl-heinz.wagner@univie.ac.at
Research Focus:
The Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Vienna is divided into several working groups focusing on various areas of nutritional sciences related to the impact of foods/ food ingredients on human health and herein especially healthy aging. As an experimental working group we are focusing on lifestyle triggers such as the diet, single food compounds, phytochemicals, physical activity and physiologically active non- food compounds (e.g. bile pigments) and their effects on Oxidative Stress and DNA Stability mainly in human metabolism by initiating human intervention, cross-sectional or case-control studies and investigate mechanisms by in vitro approaches. At the bench we are exploring the topic with modern techniques (biomarker) for the determination of antioxidative compounds, biochemical and molecular methods to monitor the oxidation of macromolecules and their oxidation products, approaches for the detection of ROS induced DNA and chromosomal damage, DNA repair and methods used to measure antioxidant enzymes, transcriptional factors and gene responses.With this background we initiated at University of Vienna the research platform "Active Ageing" (http://activeageing.univie.ac.at/), since ageing is considered to be one of the European Grand challenges with profound impacts on economic sustainability, social structures and healthy care delivery and sustainability. Understanding the etiology of sarcopenia in the elderly on a molecular basis is critical to prescribing more effective nutritional, lifestyle and/or pharmaceutical strategies to prevent, delay or reverse the loss of muscle mass and strength with aging.
Univ.-Prof. Dipl. oec. troph. Dr. Ina Bergheim, Privatdoz.
+43-1-4277-54981
Research Focus:
The Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Vienna is divided into several working groups focusing on various areas of nutritional sciences related to the impact of foods/ food ingredients on human health and herein especially healthy aging. The research of the research field “Molecular Nutritional Sciences” focuses on the molecular mechanisms underlying the development and progression of metabolic liver diseases e.g. non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and alcoholic liver disease (ALD) as well as their nutrition-based prevention and therapy. Herein, the interaction of nutrients and alcohol, respectively, with the intestinal barrier function and the role of these interactions in the development of metabolic liver disease are a main focus in research. Furthermore, molecular mechanisms involved in aging associated liver degeneration and the impact of alterations of intestinal barrier function herein are investigated. Using different model organisms’ findings from these studies are then used for developing new strategies to prevent and cure metabolic liver diseases as well as aging associated liver degeneration.
Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry
University of Vienna
Althanstrasse 14,
1090 Vienna
Prof. Dr. Thierry Langer
Head of Department
+43-1-4277-55103
Research Focus:
Our research is centrally engaged in the chemical part of the early drug discovery process. We are experts in medicinal chemistry as well as in the development of modern computational molecular design tools. We use them for identification of suitable starting points (hit discovery by virtual screening), for efficiently guiding the process of multiparameter molecular optimization (hit to lead expansion and lead optimization), as well as for predicting off-target toxic effects. Following a holistic pharmacoinformatic approach we combine structural modeling of proteins, structure-based drug design, chemometric and in silico chemogenomic methods, statistical modeling and machine learning approaches to develop predictive computational systems for biological targets of interest. The validation and optimisation of the obtained in silico models by strong links to experimental groups is an integral part of these activities.
Find more information here: https://pharmchem.univie.ac.at
Department of Pharmacognosy
University of Vienna
Althanstraße 14,
1090 Vienna
Prof. Dr. Verena M. Dirsch
Head of Department
+43-1-4277-55270
Research Focus:
Scientists at the Department of Pharmacognosy identify or use natural products (from plants, fungi or microorganisms) to understand biological processes that may be of potential interest for pharmaceutical use. Major expertise bundled at the Department is the identification and isolation of bioactive small molecules by high-tech analytics, chemometric and chemoinformatic activity prospecting (Rollinger lab), bioprospecting and synthetic biology of bacteria and fungi for drug discovery (Zotchev lab), as well as mammalian cell signaling studies targeted by natural products (Dirsch lab). A unique and dynamically developing environment within pharmaceutical sciences is available that provides the opportunity to work productively at the interface of chemistry and biology.
For more information: https://pharmakognosie.univie.ac.at/
Applied Mathematics and Modeling Group
Univ.-Prof. Ulisse Stefanelli, PhD
Chair for Applied Mathematics and Modeling
ulisse.stefanelli@univie.ac.at
https://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~stefanelli/
Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1,
1090 Vienna, Austria
Research Focus:
The activity of the Applied Mathematics and Modeling Group focuses on modeling and analysis with applications in physics, life science, and engineering. Our mathematics falls often within the frame of the calculus of variations and partial differential equations, with recent developments in the direction of stochastic analysis. We investigate models from materials science across scales, from atomistic descriptions of molecules to the macroscale of continuum mechanics. A second mainstay of our research are nonlinear evolution equations, both deterministic and stochastic, which we tackle via variational methods. Recent interests include biological membranes, fluid-structure interactions, structure-preserving discretizations, and stochastic partial differential equations.
Find more information here: https://www.univie.ac.at/appliedmath/
(More mathematics profiles may be viewed in the Data Science @ Uni Vienna Research Platform)
Geometric and Analytic Group Theory Research Team
Univ.-Prof. Goulnara Arzhantseva, PhD
Head of the team
goulnara.arzhantseva@univie.ac.at
Oskar-Morgenstern Platz 1
1090 Vienna, Austria
Research Focus:
Group Theory is one of the most fundamental domains of contemporary Mathematics. It is concerned with the study of 'groups', which are abstract representations of symmetries of mathematical objects. Group Theory plays a role in every branch of Pure and Applied Mathematics, and supplies powerful theoretical tools for solving problems in Physics, Chemistry, Information Science, and Engineering.
The Geometric and Analytic Group Theory Research Team (GAGT Team) is at the forefront of the modern approach to the study of groups through analytic and geometric methods. These new methods have been extremely fruitful, and have led to the solution of several long-standing unsolved questions and opened new perspectives for further research. Analytic and Geometric Group Theory finds inspiration in methods from Analysis, Geometry, Combinatorics, Probability, Computer Networks, Crystallography, Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, and beyond. These methods are synthesized in an abstract framework to reveal the structure of groups. Conversely, the insights we gain by studying groups find application in these other domains. Analytic and Geometric Group Theory has become one of the main streams of Group Theory research, and is represented in major research centers worldwide. The GAGT Team, which started in Vienna in 2010, is the first research team in this field in Austria. Our current research interests include geometric, analytic, combinatorial, and computational aspects of group theory, low-dimensional topology, unitary representations and invariant measures, metric geometry, cryptography, complexity theory and randomization.
For more information please see website: https://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~gagt/
Department of African Studies
Univ. Prof. Dr. Kirsten Rüther
+43-1-4277-43213
Spitalgasse 2, Hof 5
1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
Kirsten Rüther is Professor of African History and Societies at the University of Vienna. Her research is focused on the cultural, social and politicial histories of Christianity and African Religion, 19th- and 20th-century colonialism and the emergence of industrial cities in the transition phase from late colonialism to early independence eras. Her research is empirically rooted in the Southern African region, but she covers and supervises MA and doctoral theses in other regional parts of Africa as well. Kirsten Rüther is strongly devoted to understanding African history as part and centrepiece of globally entangled historical transformations. She is also member of a research platform on "Mobile Cultures and Societies" based at the University of Vienna.
Department of Islamic-Theological Studies
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Ebrahim Afsah
Schenkenstrasse 8-10,
A-1010 Vienna
Research Focus:
Ebrahim Afsah is Professor of Islamic Law in Vienna, with a secondary appointment as Associate Professor of International Law at the University of Copenhagen. His research focus is comparative public law, including administrative and constitutional law, in Muslim-majority societies, and public international law, especially that pertaining to the region and the critical engagement with postulated alternative visions, such as Third World Approaches to International Law and Islamic International Law. A particular interest are institutional transfers, especially in the context of post-conflict state-building and legal reform.
Find more information here: http://iits.univie.ac.at/
Department of Near Eastern Studies
Univ. Prof. Dr. Yavuz Köse
+43-1-4277-43430
Spitalgasse 2, Hof 4 (Campus)
1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
Yavuz Köse is Professor of Turcology at the University of Vienna. His research is focused on the social, economic, and consumption history of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. Particularly, he is interested in the effects of modernization and globalization in the late Ottoman Empire. Two other major topics Köse is engaged with are the environmental history and the emergence and development of tourism in the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey.
Department for Romance Studies
Ao. Univ. Prof. Mag. Dr. Friedrich Frosch
Spitalgasse 2 Hof 8
1090 Wien
(0043 -1) 4277-42682
Research Focus:
Languages, cultures, literatures and media, characterized by Romanization and colonization in Europe and other continents (such as Latin America and Africa), including aspects of multilingualism and interculturalism-
For more information: http://www.univie.ac.at/Romanistik/
Department of Slavonic Studies
Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Miranda Jakiša
email: miranda.jakisa@univie.ac.at
tel: +43-1-4277-42850
Spitalgasse 2, Hof 3 (Campus)
1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
The department of Slavic Studies has its research focus on the Slavic cultures, languages and literatures. We do research on linguistic, literary and cultural aspects of the East, West and South Slavic regions. My specialization is in the South Slavic literatures and cultures, theatre and film including Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia.
Find more information here: https://slawistik.univie.ac.at/en/
Department of Philosophy
Universitätsstraße 7 (NIG),
1010 Vienna
There are research activities in a wide range of areas within the philosophy department. The following two groups are participating in the REWIRE mentoring scheme:
Univ.-Prof. Max Kölbel, MA MPhil PhD
email: max.koelbel@univie.ac.at
tel: +43-1-4277-46470
Research Focus:
Max Kölbel’s group is active in the philosophy of language and related areas in philosophy, such as epistemology or meta-ethics. There is work on foundational questions concerning natural language semantics, about the pragmatics-semantics interface, about relativism vs. contextualism in semantics, on non-truth-conditional aspects of meaning, on slurs and derogatory speech, on propositions and semantic content (structured vs unstructured) and on concepts and conceptual engineering.
Univ.-Prof. Tarja Knuuttila, M.Soc.Sc MSc PhD
tarja.knuuttila@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-46430
Research Focus:
Tarja Knuuttila’s group works within the field of philosophy of science, with a focus on contemporary scientific practices, especially in synthetic and systems biology and economics. The central philosophical questions studied are in various ways linked to scientific representation, modelling and simulation, and interdisciplinarity. The group performs also empirical case studies as a part of its philosophical agenda. Knuuttila has been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant project: “Possible Life: The Philosophical Significance of Extending Biology” (LIFEMODE, 2019-2024) within which several members of the group are working.
Computational Physics
Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Christos N. Likos
Deputy Group Speaker
Sensengasse 8/15,
1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
Theoretical and computational soft matter physics; structure and dynamics of polymers, colloids and deformable elastic microparticles. We focus on self-assembly, glass formation and dynamics, behaviour under flow and general out-of-equilibrium conditions such as active polymers. Particular emphasis is placed on the importance of topological constraints (rings, knots) on self-organization of soft matter. A great deal of our work is performed in collaboration with experimental groups worldwide.
For more information: https://comp-phys.univie.ac.at/likos/
Gravitational Physics
Univ.-Prof. Piotr T. Chrusciel, MSc PhD
Group Speaker
+43-1-4277-51556
Boltzmanngasse 5
1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
We are working on all aspects of gravitational physics, within the Faculty of Physics of the University.
For more information: https://gravity.univie.ac.at/
Ass.-Prof. Dr. David Miro Fajman
+43-1-4277-51561
Research Focus:
I work on mathematical aspects of General Relativity, in particular on the dynamics of Einstein’s equations coupled to various matter models. This field concerns questions from mathematical cosmology or isolated self-gravitating systems focussed on the stability of various solutions of the Einstein equations.
Quantum Optics, Quantum Nanophysics and Quantum Information Group
Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Philip Walther
Group Speaker
Head of the Research Platform TURIS (Testing Quantum and Gravity Interface with Single Photons)
+43-1-4277-72560
Währingerstrasse 17,
1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
Photonic quantum computation and quantum simulation; Quantum-enhanced secure computing;
Development of scalable quantum photonic technology; Experimental investigation of the interface between quantum physics and gravity;
For more information:
http://walther.quantum.at
http://quantum.univie.ac.at
http://turis.univie.ac.at
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Markus Arndt
Deputy Group Speaker
Research Focus:
- Quantum delocalization of complex bio/molecules & nanoparticles
- Matter-wave technologies: coherent beam splitters & interferometer schemes
- Quantum tools for chemistry and biology: Matter-wave enhanced measurements
- Rotational optomechanics: Laser cooling of nanomechanical rods
- Molecular beam methods to prepare, cool & detect neutral biomolecular beams
- Superconducting nanowire detectors for (bio)chemistry
For more information: www.quantumnano.at
Priv.Doz.Dr. Beatrix Hiesmayr
+43-1-4277-51250
Research Focus:
The workgroup of theoretical physicists around Beatrix C. Hiesmayr was formed in 2008 at the University of Vienna. Our studies mainly concern the quantum phenomena at high and low energies. Our research spans from very mathematical aspects to experimental ones and, recently, also towards technological realizations.
Ass.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Thomas Juffmann
Quantum Optics, Quantum Nanophysics & Quantum Information Group, Faculty of Physics
Department for Structural and Computational biology, Centre for Molecular Biology (Max Perutz Labs)
+43-1-4277-72520
Research Focus:
- Quantum and Cavity enhanced Imaging
- Sensitivity Limits of Phase Microscopy
- Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging
- Wave-front Shaping of Electrons
- Method Development for Structural Biology
Find more information: https://imaging.univie.ac.at/
Institute of Old Testament Research and Biblical Archaeology
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Marianne Grohmann
marianne.grohmann@univie.ac.at
Schenkenstr. 8-10
A-1010 Vienna, Austria
tel. +43/1/4277-32404
https://etfat.univie.ac.at/ueber-uns/team/marianne-grohmann/#c162780
Research Focus:
- anthropology of the Hebrew Bible in its ancient Near Eastern context: concepts of birth and pre-natal
- life, concepts of im-/purity, gender research
- Psalms and Lamentations
- theory of metaphor, reader response criticism, reception history of biblical texts
- hermeneutics: the Hebrew Bible in Jewish-Christian relationship, intertextuality, biblical theology
Since my dissertation, research on the Hebrew Bible in Jewish-Christian relationship is one of my research interests. An invited monograph-project, “Autorität der Schrift” (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck), together with Prof. Dr. Florian Wilk (Göttingen), deals with heremeneutical questions of biblical theology.
Since my habilitation, the exegesis of Psalms and the Book of Lamentations in their Ancient Near Eastern context is an ongoing field of my research, especially with regard to the imagery, metaphors and the anthropologic implications of these poetic texts. I work on an invited commentary-project on the Book of Lamentations for the “Zürcher Bibelkommentar.” With articles and papers at conferences about Lamentations, a Joint Seminar “Cultures of Defeat” at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem 2017 I have elaborated exegetical research about special aspects of the book.
I cooperate with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem both in research and teaching. I am a member of the Interdisciplinary Research Center “Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society” at the University of Vienna.
Department of Applied Psychology: Health, Development, Enhancement and Intervention
Liebiggasse 5,
1010 Vienna
Prof. Dr. Stefanie Höhl
Deputy Head of Department
+43 (0) 1 4277 47270
Research Focus:
Our research focuses on development in infancy and childhood and the transition into adulthood. A special focus of our early childhood research is on social cognition and learning in social interactions. We use various methodological approaches from behavioral and brain sciences. For instance, we apply interactive eye tracking, EEG, fNIRS and behavior observations. For more information see: https://www.kinderstudien.at/en/
Ass.-Prof. Giorgia Silani, Privatdoz. PhD
+43-1-4277-47223
Research Focus:
Social cognition, inter-subjectivity, social behaviors are crucial elements for successful everyday interaction and communication as well as for a mature and fulfilling quality of life. The primary aim of the Unit is to understand from a neuroscientific point of view the mechanisms (neurochemical and neurophysiological) behind processes at the heart of what has been termed “social intelligence”, such as empathy and prosocial behaviors, in the clinical and non-clinical population. This goal is achieved by using multi-level approach that combines different methodologies: genetic, functional neuroimaging, TMS, EEG and pharmacological manipulations.
Basic research: focus on the understanding of the fundamental mechanisms behind social cognition, social emotions and their link to social behaviors.
Clinical research: focus on the understanding of deficits in social competence and processing of other people’s mental and emotional states observed in pathology such as sociopathy, autism and alexithymia.
Developmental research: focus on the understanding of the development of social emotions, social intelligence and prosociality across the life span.
Translational research: focus on bridging different theoretical and methodological approaches such as psychotherapy and neuroscience.
Find more information here: https://psychologie.univie.ac.at/forschung/institute/institut-fuer-angewandte-psychologie-gesundheit-entwicklung-und-foerderung/
Univ. Prof. Dr. Brigitte Lueger-Schuster
brigitte.lueger-schuster@univie.ac.at
Research Focus:
Brigitte Lueger-Schuster’s lab is specialized in Psychotraumatology, covering a broad variety of topics, such as the longterm consequences of childhood maltreatment in institutions, war time trauma, migration and mental health, and traumatic sequaelae in vulnerable groups, e.g people with intellectual disabilities, and includes several age groups (children, adults, elderly).
Their work includes assessment issues, e.g for ICD-11 Complex PTSD, treatment, e.g. for asylum seekers. They use a broad variety of methods.
Brigitte Lueger-Schuster is part of several international working groups, e.g the global collaboration group of the International Society of Traumatic Stress Studies.
Find more information here:
https://klinische-gesundheit-psy.univie.ac.at/forschung/arbeitsgruppen/psychotraumatologie/team/univ-prof-dr-brigitte-lueger-schuster-privatdoz/
Department of Applied Psychology: Work, Education, Economy
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Arnd Florack
Deputy Head of Department
Universitätsstr. 7
A-1010 Wien
Research Focus:
- self-regulation, regulatory focus
- consumer motivation, attention, and behavior
- healthy and sustainable consumption
- consumption and well-being
- acculturation / stereotyping
A description of our thematic area (Work, Society, and Economy) according to the developmental plan of the university:
One of the biggest challenges people face today is the need to accommodate constantly changing working, societal, and economic environments. On the one hand, employees need to adapt to new and flexible working conditions. Consumers are more and more active agents in the value creation process and, at the same time, have the challenge to make decisions based on an immense amount of information and between a great variety of offers. Moreover, citizens are confronted with complex structures of incentives and obligations (e.g., tax laws) and need to precisely assess their lawful duties, and acknowledge the way their decision processes operate. On the other hand, companies, marketing managers, and governing authorities focus on changing people’s behavior that can serve their local (e.g., profits of companies) or global benefits (e.g., reducing climate change). In the department of “work, society, and economy”, researchers study these important challenges with a great variety of methodological expertise applying theories from work, organizational, economic, and social psychology.A description of the key research area (Psychology of Changes and Decisions in Organizations and the Economy)This key research area (which primarily falls within the thematic area of work, society and the economy) studies how people respond to the challenges they are facing in economic contexts today. It particularly focuses on changes in organisations and in the world of work, including the acceleration of work, decisions regarding work processes, the consequences of monitoring and trust with regard to commitment to rules (e.g. tax compliance), and how humans respond to the permanent availability of products and regulate their own consumption. This area also examines differences between countries and cultural influences. Its research is based on theories from work psychology and organisational psychology, economic psychology and social psychology, and contributes to their advancement. In its applied research, quantitative methods predominate. Cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys, observations and diary studies are conducted. Another goal is to prove causal influences in field and laboratory studies. The aforementioned methods are complemented by qualitative approaches such as interviews, focus groups and association techniques, which are used to study topics such as social representations of economic phenomena. In addition, techniques such as eye movement measurement are applied in both field and lab studies in order to directly capture the use of information for decision-making. This key research area examines both aspects of experience (such as emotions) and specific, observable behaviours and decisions.https://psychologie.univie.ac.at/en/research/key-research-areas/psychology-of-changes-and-decisions-in-organisations-and-in-the-economy/
Univ.-Prof. Dr.Dr. Christiane Spiel
Deputy Head of Department
+43-1-4277-47312
Chair Bildung-Psychology and Evaluation:
https://bildung-psy.univie.ac.at/ueber-uns/christiane-spiel/
Research Focus:
How can we promote lifelong learning competencies in educational Settings?
This is the main research question the faculty’s research focus on lifelong learning (I am chairing together with my colleague Barbara Schober) is focusing. In particular, we are interested in analysis and promotion of learning motivation and self-regulated learning competencies in secondary and tertiary education. Other research topics we are interested in are gender stereotypes in education and (cyber)bullying. A current research topic is on education in digital transformation. We have made and continue to make essential contributions to our understanding of how e.g., teachers can support students’ learning, violence prevention, and avoiding of stereotypes. Our research activities are characterized by (1) high expertise in prevention-, intervention-, evaluation-, and implementation research and (2) international exchange and cooperation.
Find more information here: https://psychologie.univie.ac.at/ueber-uns/institute/institut-fuer-angewandte-psychologie-arbeit-bildung-wirtschaft/
Department of Basic Psychological Research and Research Methods
Liebiggasse 5,
1010 Vienna
Univ. Prof. Dr. Helmut Leder
Head of Department
Speaker of the interdisciplinary Research Institution CognitiveScience HUB
+43-1-4277-47110
Research Focus:
The Research Focus Empirical Visual Aesthetics (EVAlab), was founded in 2004 by Helmut Leder and is recognized as the earliest department with a specific research focus on Visual Empirical Aesthetics. Only recently similar initiatives have emerged elsewhere (MPI Frankfurt, Goldsmith, NYU). Over twelve years, the Research Focus established a unique research team and network in the field of visual aesthetics, and now holds a role of international leadership in psychological empirical art research with numerous important publications pioneering empirical approaches (physiology of art emotion, fluency and art, face beauty, museum studies, art and health, eye-tracking) and theoretical modeling of aesthetic experience. No other group has in fact established more theoretical contributions on the state-of-the-art in psychological aesthetics with leading models for viewing art (Leder et al., 2004; Leder & Nadal, 2014), as well as more neuroscientifically grounded models, published in prestigious journals. The EVAlab has also been host to a number of researchers in empirical aesthetics, serving as a central hub for research in this emerging area.
Find more information here: https://cognitivescience.univie.ac.at/
Prof. Claus Lamm
Deputy Head of Department
claus.lamm@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-47130
Research Focus:
How do we understand others? What are the neural bases of our emotions? How is our social behavior shaped by the brain?
These are just some of the questions the SCAN unit (directed by PI Claus Lamm) has been investigating since its formation in 2010. We are a group of international researchers who combine psychological theory with cutting edge neuroscientific methodology to study the biological basis of human's social and emotional life. Our special research focus lies on the neuroscience of empathy. We have made and continue to make essential contributions to our understanding of how humans as well as animals share the feelings of others and take their point of view. This research enterprise is complemented by research activities in the fields of decision making, moral behavior, and mental health.
For further information, please click here:
https://scan-psy.univie.ac.at/
https://scan-psy.univie.ac.at/about-us/claus-lamm/
Prof. Dr. Frank Scharnowski
Frank.Scharnowski@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-47120
Research Focus:
We focus on the development and optimization of novel experimental therapies for neurological and psychiatric conditions. Composed of clinicians, psychologists, neuroscientists, physicists and engineers from Austria, Canada, France, Germany, India and Switzerland, the lab translates advanced brain imaging and signal processing tools into new brain-based interventions such as neurofeedback. The lab is also aiming to better understand the neural underpinnings of psychiatric and neurological conditions and how these novel interventions promote recovery and healing. Feel free to get in touch if you are enthusiastic about integrating methods, thinking, and insights across the boundaries of psychology (learning mechanisms), medicine (psychiatric & neurological disorders), neuroscience (brain plasticity) and biomedical engineering (signal processing for brain imaging).
For more information: http://www.neurofeedback-research.org
Department of Communication
Rathausstraße 19
1010 Vienna
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Jörg Matthes
Head of Department
Tel.: +43 1 4277 49307
Research Focus:
The Vienna Advertising and Media Effects (AdMe) Research Group deals with the impact of modern media environments on people's thinking, behavior, and opinions. The research focus of our group includes areas such as marketing communication, advertising effectiveness, political advertising, as well as the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral effects of mass media more generally. More recently, we have developed a strong focus on social media and research with children and adolescents. Working with quantitative and qualitative social science methods, we integrate scholarship from communication science, social psychology, political science, and marketing.
More information can be found at http://advertisingresearch.univie.ac.at
Univ.-Prof. Hajo Boomgaarden, PhD
+43 (0)1 4277 49905
Research Focus:
Hajo Boomgaarden works on a set of topics that are largely related to the field of political communication. He is interested in media portrayals of politics and interpersonal communication about politics, and in the effects of such communication on political knowledge, attitudes and behaviours. His work relates to election campaigns on the national or European level, on right-wing populist politics or polarisation. A strong focus lies on work looking at the relationship between media and migration from various perspectives. In addition to his substantive research, Prof Boomgaarden works on advancements of computational methods in communication science, ranging from text analysis to complex social networks or simulation studies.
Find more information here: https://publizistik.univie.ac.at/
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Sophie Lecheler
+43-1-4277-493 75
Althanstraße 14 (UZA II),
1090 Vienna
Research Focus:
Members of the Political Communication Research Group study the interaction between political elites, media, and citizens. We are specifically interested in understanding how and under which conditions political elites communicate with citizens, what role media organizations and journalists play in the political communication process, and how citizens process elite and journalistic communication. We use a variety of qualitative and quantitative social research methods to develop and test theories that help understand the quality of political communication in democracies today. At the moment, we are particularly interested in the role of disinformation and emotion, as well as identity and group behaviour in digital democracies. For more information: https://polcom.univie.ac.at
Department of Government
Rathausstraße 19
1010 Vienna
Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Sylvia Kritzinger
sylvia.kritzinger@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-49902
Research Focus:
In general: Comparative Politics
In particular: Political Competition, Political Behaviour, Electoral Democracy and Elections, Governments and Coalitions.
Univ.-Prof. Markus Wagner, PhD
markus.wagner@univie.ac.at
+43 1 4277 49912
Research Focus:
party competition, political psychology, public opinion, voting behaviour
More information: http://staatswissenschaft.univie.ac.athttp://wagnermarkus.net
Department of Political Science
Neues Institutsgebäude
Universitätsstr. 7
1010 Vienna
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Ulrich Brand
Head of Department
orcid.org/0000-0002-5760-4652
+43 1 4277 49452
Research Focus:
The Department of Political Science is active in all major fields of political science. It is dedicated to innovative and problem-focused research areas and offers various options for specialisation in the study of political science. The departmental research focus is on the transformation of governance, statehood and democracy in different policy areas, geographical regions and political spaces. Ulrich Brand´s research subjects are globalization and its critique, Latin America, environmental and resource politics as well as social movements.
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Barbara Prainsack
Deputy Head of Department
barbara.prainsack@univie.ac.at
+43-1-4277-494 23
Professor for Comparative Policy Analysis
Deputy Head of DepartmentMember of the ethics committee in the fields of Social and Economic Sciences of the University of Vienna
Research Focus:
The Department of Political Science is active in all major fields of political science. It is dedicated to innovative and problem-focused research areas and offers various options for specialisation in the study of political science. The departmental research focus is on the transformation of governance, statehood and democracy in different policy areas, geographical regions and political spaces. The department offers a number of formats and instruments for the support of early-stage career scholars, such as a writing group, a grant academy, writing retreats, as well as seminars and research group meetings.
Find more information here: https://politikwissenschaft.univie.ac.at/en/about-us/department/
Ass.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Alice Vadrot
Wächtergasse 1,
5. OG, Top 504,
1010 Vienna
Research Focus:
- Global Environmental Politics
- Practices, discourses and institutions in international biodiversity politics
- Institutions interfacing science and policy & global environmental assessments
- Knowledge and power in international politics
- Data policies and politics
- (International) Marine Biodiversity Politics
MARIPOLDATA is an ERC Starting Grant project running from November 2018 to October 2023. The project is located at the University of Vienna under the direction of Ass.-Prof. Dr. Alice Vadrot (Department of Political Science).The project uses ongoing negotiations on a new international legally binding instrument under the United Nation Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) to study these processes in action.MARIPOLDATA aims to overcome gaps in how marine biodiversity data and monitoring within international politics is understood, studied and practiced. The project will significantly advance our knowledge of how marine biodiversity science is represented, developed and used in international negotiation settings and national monitoring programmes.This will allow empirically grounded conclusions on how science-policy interrelations materialise and transform the governance of the global commons.The MARIPOLDATA project has four specific objectives, which are linked to four interrelated work packages and a specific set of research questions:
- Investigate the negotiations of a new legally-binding treaty under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea aiming at the protection of marine biodiversity (WP1)
- Map and analyse the distribution of marine biodiversity science and expertise around the globe and assess the opportunities for developing and using global and national monitoring infrastructures (WP2)
- Examine the role of scientific data in international negotiations and processes for identifying and protecting ecologically or biologically significant marine areas (EBSAs) in the framework of the CBD) (WP3)
- Analyse and compare selected regional and national biodiversity monitoring policies and practices with regards to the political and technological strategies employed to access, regulate, manage and use marine biodiversity data. (WP4).
More information here: https://www.maripoldata.eu/
Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Univ-Prof. Dr. Peter Schweitzer
Head - Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Universitätsstrasse 7,1010 Vienna
+43-1-4277-495 37
Research Focus:
- Anthropology of the Built Environment
- Mobilities
- Remote Areas
- Climate Change
- Indigenous Movements
- Cultures and Identities
- History of Anthropology
- Arctic and Subarctic
- former Soviet Union
Department of Sociology
Rooseveltplatz 2,
1090 Vienna
https://sowi.univie.ac.at/en/departments/sociology/
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Michaela Pfadenhauer
Head of Department
+43-1-4277-49260
michaela.pfadenhauer@univie.ac.at
Research Focus:
Michaela Pfadenhauer made substantial contributions in the fields of sociology of professions, the methodology of qualitative research, sociology of knowledge and mediatization research. Her dramaturgical approach emphasizes the performative accomplishments necessary to establish expert competence. In the field of qualitative social research, she contributes significantly to the international dissemination of ethnography, expert interviews and phenomenologically oriented approaches. She strengthens the sociology of knowledge in transition towards communicative Constructivism on an international level. Major research topics are Knowledge Cultures, mediatization, i.e. cultural change with regard to digitalization, and Social Robotics. Find more information here: https://sowi.univie.ac.at/en/departments/sociology/
Univ.-Prof. Yuri Kazepov, PhD
Deputy Head of Department
+43 (0)1 4277 49270
Research Focus:
Yuri Kazepov works on issues related to the broader field of urban studies and comparative social policies. He is interested in multilevel governance arrangements and how they define the contours of opportunity structures and social exclusion patterns. His work is primarily comparative, mainly at European level, but increasingly also beyond EU borders, including North and South America and East Asian countries. A strong focus lies on local social policies, poverty and social exclusion and their territorial dimension. Also school-to-work transitions, environmentally and socially sustainable policies, etc. In addition to his substantive research, Prof. Kazepov works also on comparative mixed methodologies using cities as entry points for multiple levels and territorial analyses. Projects he is coordinating or is involved in and further research interests are to be found at: www.soz.univie.ac.at/kazepov