Six US scientists from some of the most prestigious universities in the US will be coming to the University of Vienna this year. They conduct research in a wide range of disciplines: from materials physics and chemistry to anthropology, art history, and communication science.
The fact that these top researchers will continue their work in Austria rather than in the US has been made possible by the APART-USA scholarship program of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW). With APART-USA, the ÖAW responded to changes in the US research landscape under the Trump administration, which have led to considerable uncertainty in the United States and internationally. The program offers excellent US scientists with postdoctoral degrees an attractive opportunity to continue their work at Austrian universities and non-university research institutions.
A total of 25 researchers are moving to Austria, six of whom are coming to the University of Vienna:
- Art historian Ravinder Binning from Colgate University is moving to the Faculty of History and Cultural Studies
- Anthropologist Audrey Lin is moving from the American Museum of Natural History in New York to the Faculty of Life Sciences
- Communication scientist Matt Minich is moving from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Division of Research and Evaluation/Office of Health Communication and Education at the FDA to the Faculty of Social Sciences
- Materials physicist Jigyasa Nigam, currently at MIT and Harvard, is moving to the Faculty of Physics
- Chemist Mihai Popescu from Colorado State University is moving to the Faculty of Chemistry
- Physicist Andrea Urru is moving from Rutgers University to the Faculty of Physics
Four-year funding
The scholarships awarded will each run for 48 months and are endowed with €500,000 each. APART-USA is financed 75 percent by the Fonds Zukunft Österreich (FZÖ) and 25 percent by the host research institutions where the fellows are employed. The US researchers are employed at universities and research institutions throughout Austria – from Vienna to Innsbruck, Graz, Linz, and Salzburg.
An overview of all 25 scholarship holders can be found in the ÖAW press release (in German).