Curtain Rises on Austria’s New Clusters of Excellence

On May 6, 2024, researchers in the new Clusters of Excellence received their funding awards from Science Minister Martin Polaschek, FWF President Christof Gattringer, and members of the FWF Executive Board at the Urania in Vienna.
May 14, 2024
Glass trophies of the excellence initiative
The FWF is expanding the excellent=austria excellence initiative to include two further large-scale research projects on healthy aging and artificial intelligence. © FWF/Christine Miess

Two new research clusters, “Metabolic Control of Aging and Disease” on healthy aging and “Bilateral Artificial Intelligence” on artificial intelligence, will be conducting major inter-institutional research projects at a total of nine participating research institutions over the next five years. On the evening of May 6, representatives of these new Clusters of Excellence received their awards from Science Minister Martin Polaschek and FWF President Christof Gattringer, FWF Vice-President Ursula Jakubek, and FWF Vice-President of Research Gerlinde Mautner.

During the award ceremony, the two research directors of the new Clusters of Excellence, Sepp Hochreiter from the Johannes Kepler University Linz and Frank Madeo from the University of Graz, together with the members of the Boards of Directors, talked about the content and objectives of their research projects. Representing the participating research institutions, Stefan Koch, Rector of the University of Linz, and Peter Riedler, Vice-Rector of the University of Graz, emphasized the importance of the Clusters of Excellence for the research institutions and for Austria as a research location.

Impressions of the award ceremony