brandannual 2019

Institute of Science and Technology Austria
IST Austria
A decade of growth
The Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST
Austria) is an international, PhD-granting, interdisciplinary
research institution dedicated to cutting-edge
basic research in the life sciences, physics, math, and
computer sciences and training the next generation
of scientists. Almost ten years ago, in June 2009, the
campus in Klosterneuburg was officially inaugurated
and opened its doors to welcome the first staff
and scientists, embarking on a path towards the
ambitious goal of becoming a beacon for scientific
excellence in Austria and worldwide.
The past decade has seen IST Austria grow into a
productive, vibrant center for basic research of
the highest quality, as is evidenced by the very
encouraging figures in the annual Nature Index
survey published in September 2018. Of all research
institutions established within the last 30 years, IST
Austria is ranked eighth among the “rising stars” in the
world, the only institution outside of Asia to appear in
the top ten.
Success at the European Research Council
Another continued sign of the faculty’s is the success in
acquiring funding from the European Research Council
(ERC). Due to their highly competitive nature—the average
acceptance rate of grant submissions being 13%—
ERC grants are an internationally accepted indicator of
scientific excellence, as well as an important instrument
for financing basic research. With 50% of the submitted
grant applications from campus awarded, IST Austria
has by far the highest success rate in Europe among all
research institutions hosting more than 30 ERC grantees—an
illustrious list which includes Oxford and Cambridge,
ETH Zurich and Lausanne, and the Weizmann
Institute. Currently, about two thirds of our faculty have
obtained at least one ERC grant.
A growing Institution
The Institute as a whole continues to grow: around 700
scientists and staff are currently employed, among them
IST Austria’s newest faculty members: mathematician
Tim Browning, previously a professor at the University
of Bristol; neurobiologist Mario De Bono from the
Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge,
UK; quantum physicist Andrew Higginbotham from
the Microsoft Station Q in Copenhagen; and soft-matter
physicist Scott Waitukaitis from the AMOLF institute in
Amsterdam. They have brought the total number of IST
Austria faculty to 52.
Another rapidly growing group on campus is the graduate
students. This fall, IST Austria welcomed a new
cohort of 56 doctoral students; there are now nearly 200
graduate students on campus. In the first decade, a total
of 60 students have already obtained their PhD degree
and left the Institute to pursue their next career steps.
IST Austria is also proud of its growing family of alumni,
who continue to spread and make their marks on the
world: postdocs and PhD students who left the Institute
this year have taken on positions across the globe, from
Australia to Poland to California, at organizations such
as Harvard University and Google.
Translation to economy
The Technology Transfer Office is the one-stop shop for
all matters related to intellectual property, industry liaison,
and entrepreneurship at IST Austria. It is responsible
for patent protection and licensing, and supports
the creation of spin-off companies and cooperation with
52 brandannual The Business and Investment Magazine