IST Austria

A Beacon for Scientific Excellence

In the early 2000s, the Austrian Government had an ambitious goal: build an outstanding science institute dedicated to basic research that would attract top scientists from all over the world and put Austria on the map for world-class research. But nobody had done anything like this before. How do you go about it? What are the key components? So they asked three experts in science organization for help. Haim Harari, Olaf Kübler, and Hubert Markl, former presidents of the Weizmann Institute, ETH Zürich, and the Max Planck Society, formed a committee to outline a set of principles to guide the construction, organization, and management of a world-class science institute. The committee’s final report— submitted in 2006—was the foundation of what was to become the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria): a world-class, international institute committed to supporting curiosity-driven basic research in a wide range of areas.

IST Austria has come a long way in the short time since the founding document was created, turning a set of principles into a living, breathing, thriving establishment. In many ways, it still resembles the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel—which remains an important role model—though it has adopted best practices in research and science management from top research institutes and universities around the world, and has pioneered new ideas as well. All of these come together to guide IST Austria’s growth and development as the Institute works toward its core missions: to perform world-class research; to train the next generation of scientific leaders; to support science education and technology transfer; and to implement best practices in science management.

A Growing Campus

The campus opened in 2009, only three years after the founding documents were submitted to the Austrian government. The first professor to join was Nick Barton, a renowned British evolutionary biologist and member of the Royal Society. Tom Henzinger, a computer scientist who had been a professor at UC Berkeley and at EPFL Lausanne, became the first president of the growing institute. At this time, it had just 37 employees, and comprised three buildings, one research building, a lecture hall, and an administration building.

Nick Barton and Tom Henzinger still joke that rubber boots were part of their work outfits in the early days, due to the mud from the construction going on around them. In the years following, the infrastructure has expanded to include three additional laboratory and office buildings, two scientific facility buildings, and a second administration building, as well as additional structures to promote campus well-being and community, such as the cafeteria, the apartments, and the kindergarten. The fifth laboratory building is under construction, and it will be joined by a sixth building, as well as by a visitor center in the coming years.

IST Austria now employs nearly 850 scientists and administrators, including 59 faculty members, with plans to reach over 1,000 employees and 90 research groups by 2026. The faculty has broad research interests, ranging from machine learning to social immunity to functional nanomaterials, with 19 faculty in the area Information and System Sciences, 20 in Life Sciences, and 20 in Mathematical and Physical Sciences.

An International Community

Scientists on campus are not only diverse in their focuses, but in their backgrounds. IST Austria has attracted scientists from around 70 countries, primarily from the EU and the United States. Moreover, many scientists earned their Ph.D.s and/or held positions in the United States. American-born Carrie Bernecky completed her Ph.D. and a postdoc at the University of Colorado, Boulder, then joined IST Austria as an assistant professor in 2018 after another postdoc at the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen. “I was attracted to IST Austria in particular because of the generous core funding and their commitment to invest in the state-of-the-art equipment necessary for high-level research,” says Bernecky. Her transition to Austria and the Institute has been a smooth one: “I especially appreciate that the working language at IST Austria is English. It really is the language you hear most often around campus, and to me, this is welcoming and inclusive.”

Diverse Funding Supporting Diverse Interests

One of the key provisions in the founding principles of IST Austria is its variety of funding sources. Third-party funding represents a significant portion of IST Austria’s intake, totaling around €157 million (as of September 2020). €75.1 million of this comes from European Research Council (ERC) grants, the most prestigious grants for basic science in Europe. Fourty IST Austria professors have received 49 of these extremely competitive grants, and the grantees comprise many different nationalities and areas, including the U.S.: Vadim Kaloshin (mathematician), Scott Waitukaitis (physicist), and Chris Wojtan (computer scientist) are all U.S. citizens and ERC grantees.

Industry Collaborations and Technology Transfer

Though not yet a significant source of funding, IST Austria pursues technology transfer wherever possible, and seeks to patent results and encourage collaborations with companies when appropriate. Several faculty members work with private start-ups, many of them based in the United States. Assistant Professor Dan Alistarh, for instance, is the head of machine learning research at Neural Magic, an MIT spin-off that works to develop “nohardware AI” that makes deep learning accessible and affordable for everyone.

Another computer science professor, cryptographer Krzysztof Pietrzak, is one of the scientific advisors to Chia Network, a U.S.-based blockchain start-up that will provide a sustainable alternative to current popular blockchains, such as Bitcoin. The technology park—IST Park—across the road from the main campus is another hotspot for collaborations between companies who rent space in the office building and scientists on campus. Moreover, companies employ former IST Austria scientists, and some were even founded by scientists wanting to turn their research results into practical applications.

A Word with the President of IST Austria, Professor Tom Henzinger

What did you like most about the United States?
I lived in the USA for 19 years but it was a long time ago, from 1985 to 2004. Much has changed since then, both in the United States and in Europe, and not everything for the better. I shudder to think, though, how my scientific career would have gone had I not moved to the U.S. The opportunities to attend a Ph.D. program in the 1980s and obtain an independent faculty position immediately after my Ph.D. were critical to my scientific career. We now offer these opportunities at IST Austria, but even in 2020, the graduate school and the tenure track are still not universally accepted concepts in Europe.

What are the differences in research between the U.S. and Austria?
There are no differences in the research topics, equipment, or quality of the researchers. There are, however, significant differences in the organization and funding of research, which give an enormous dynamism to American research. Critical elements include the influx and integration of graduate students from the entire world and the competitive distribution of most research funds in the U.S. Both elements reward performance over traditions, connections, and hierarchies. With the founding of the European Research Council (ERC), Europe has taken an important step in this direction. The ERC is one of the few European science policy initiatives that has also been noticed by researchers in the U.S.

What was your experience returning to Austria?
My family moved to Switzerland in 2004, which made my (unexpected) return to Austria in 2009 simple. Having lived in different countries for extended periods of time, however, I can say one thing: on practically every issue, there is some country that does it better than the others, but there is no country that does it best in all regards.

Professor Tom Henzinger, President of IST Austria and recent inductee to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, was born in Linz, Austria, and received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in California. Since then, he has held positions at universities and research institutes in the U.S. and Europe. He returned to Austria in 2009 as one of the first four professors at IST Austria.

More information: https://ist.ac.at/en/home

Hannes RichterJanuary 16, 2021