6 FWF-ASTRA Awards and 2 Merit Awards to researchers from the University of Vienna

Attracting and retaining highly talented researchers in international competition: The new FWF ASTRA Awards, each with a funding volume of around €1 million, give advanced postdocs a chance to make the leap to the top of their research field. The FWF is awarding a total of 18 prizes to researchers who will be implementing five-year projects at universities and other research institutions throughout Austria.

Their project ideas were selected in a highly competitive selection process involving a hearing before an international jury. The thematic diversity across all areas of basic research is reflected in the distribution by discipline: Roughly one third of the funded projects are in the natural sciences and technology, one third in biology and medicine, and one third in the humanities and social sciences. As a result of this funding decision, three of the 18 researchers will be moving to an Austrian university or non-university research institution as incoming researchers.

Six ASTRA awards go to young researchers from the University of Vienna: Legal scholar Lisa Isola, cognitive biologist Megan Lambert, mathematician Angelika Manhart, mathematician Daniele Semola, cell biologist Megan Sørensen, and social scientist Dagmar Vorlíček.

Lisa Isola: Revisiting private law from a historical-comparative perspective

The Austrian Civil Code (ABGB) of 1811, along with the French Code Civil of 1804, is one of the two longest-serving civil law codifications in the world. About a third of its provisions and its structure still correspond to the original version. These are the result of careful preparation and comparative legal considerations, which took into account various historical sources as well as different legal traditions within the Habsburg Empire. Over time, the origins of individual provisions have been forgotten. In her project, Lisa Isola will uncover these roots and analyze how they were affected by later influences. 

Megan Lambert: Unlocking animals' innovative responses to change

How do animals come up with new solutions to unfamiliar challenges? In her project, Megan Lambert is investigating when and how birds innovate - a behavior important for coping with change, yet whose immediate drivers are not fully understood. Focusing on two notoriously inquisitive bird species, the kea parrot and the striated caracara, she and her team will be exploring which traits support innovation, when innovations are likely to arise under natural conditions, and how these new behaviors spread. Understanding these processes is important for revealing how behavior, cognition, and context shape animals' responses to environmental change - and how we can best support their conservation.

Angelika Manhart: Unraveling the secrets of cell coordination

What happens when cells move as a group? Why are cancer cell clusters more successful at metastasizing than single cells? In her interdisciplinary project, Angelika Manhart investigates the science of cell coordination. She combines mathematical modeling & simulation with experiments to explore how cell properties, their environment, and cell-to-cell communication shape collective behavior. While relevant to processes like fetal development and wound healing, Manhart's work focuses on how cancer spreads, using cells from breast cancer patients. With this powerful combination of approaches, the project aims to uncover why moving as a team might give cells a crucial advantage. 

Daniele Semola: Expanding the mathematical foundations for analyzing large networks

The Ricci curvature is a way of measuring the distortion of a space from a flat surface. It is ubiquitous in mathematics and the natural sciences. Despite being a quantity that can be measured locally, it provides global information on the shape of an observed space. The goal of Daniele Simola's project is to address some of the longstanding open questions on the Ricci curvature, thus improving our understanding of the shape of spaces with a Ricci curvature bounded from below. 

Megan Sørensen: Understanding how microbial partnerships have shaped evolution

Organisms interact with one another constantly, and occasionally form tightly integrated partnerships. These partnerships have been critical in the evolution of life and play important roles in ecosystems. In her project, Megan Sørensen seeks to uncover how these vital partnerships evolved. To achieve this, this project will study microbial partnerships that are at critical tipping points along this evolutionary process. Sørensen will be studying molecular integrations between the microbial partners at every level of their cell biology. Methods will range from cutting-edge technologies that visualize molecules within a single cell to field sampling that will monitor these organisms in nature. Ultimately, this project will help uncover fundamental evolutionary processes that have shaped, and continue to shape, life on earth. 

Dagmar Vorlíček: Exploring overlooked histories of security innovations

In her project, social scientist Dagmar Vorlíček explores how expertise inherited from the past can be adapted for changing political and security conditions. The project investigates different pathways of reinventing expertise from the Cold War until today, and studies the histories of science diplomacy in Austria, biodefence in Czechia, and cybernetics in Estonia. Through innovative methodology focusing on the transformation of expert ideas, tools, and networks, this work will help us understand how security politics shape scientific research, and vice versa. By doing so, it will provide insights into overlooked legacies from the past and pave the way for exploring innovative ways to address new and emerging security threats. 

Two Merit Awards for young researchers at the University of Vienna

Nine other researchers who qualified for the jury hearing on the basis of their proposals’ outstanding reviews but were not selected to receive an ASTRA Award will be given a Merit Award in the form of reduced funding for their research project. Merit Award funding is equivalent to the funding volume of average FWF projects. Two young researchers from the University of Vienna were awarded Merit Awards: Eduard Fadeev and Katharina Lust.