Dr. Christian Prosl, Austrian ambassador to the United States addressing the participants of the AST 09 in his opening remarks.
As Dr. Christian Prosl, Austrian ambassador to the United States, put it in his opening remarks: "Time is not standing still, not even in Austria." Therefore, he called on the approximately 100 participants at the Austrian Science Talk 2009 to "engage proactively and get yourselves informed and involved." It was the sixth time that the Austrian Science Talk - the major annual networking event for US-based Austrian scientists - had been hosted by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology (BMVIT) along with the "brainpower austria" initiative. With the theme "Under Crisis Conditions - Using Research and Technology as a means to step out of the Crisis," the event was held in New Orleans, October 3, 2009.
Tomorrow is better than today
Keynote speaker Norbert Bischofberger, presenting the success story of Gilead.
Günter Bischof, head of the "Center Austria" at the University of New Orleans, introduced the keynote speaker for the event, the Austrian-born and -educated Norbert Bischofberger.
Twenty-two years ago, this internationally successful scientist founded a small start-up enterprise in the San Francisco Bay area. However, major success would not be achieved overnight. His enterprise, Gilead, required 15 years of intense research and development, along with an investment of more than $1 billion, finally leading to a success story that could not be more impressive.
Today, Gilead is a 4000-employee multinational company, with a turnover on sales that exceeds five billion dollars. Tamiflu and Atripla are notable examples of their product range. As Bischofberger observed, not only research activities but, more importantly, the entrepreneurial spirit of the Bay Area led to this success. Gilead is in good company with enterprises such as Intel, Google, and Genentech also based in the Bay Area or nearby.
Participants of the AST09 listened attentively.
Having access to a well-established venture capital system, not being averse to risk-taking, and having the ability to accept failure are major differences between the entrepreneurial spirit found in the Bay Area and that found in Europe, according to Bischofberger. However, he also had to pay a price for the better business environment in California. Originally a native of Vorarlberg, Bischofberger used his preferred language - which, after more than two decades, is now English - to make his presentation to the bemused Austrian ex-pat community who well understood the language issue.
Rainer Amon spent a good portion of his childhood on a farm while growing up in Obervellach, Austria, where Amon, now an associate professor of marine science and oceanography in the Department of Marine Science at Texas A&M University at Galveston (TAMUG), got his first examples of "real life biology." "I think spending the better part of my growing up on a farm had a big impact on what I chose for my career," said Amon, describing the happy days of his childhood - going to school, then coming home and playing outside with friends or one of his four siblings until it was time for dinner. Although all the real life experience led Amon to a career in biology, a couple of opportunities crossed his path for marine biology. These would eventfully land him in Texas - The Lone Star State - where he concentrates on biogeochemical fluxes in aquatic environments, the global carbon cycle, and interdisciplinary research in Arctic Oceanography.
"I have no recipes for global solutions. I am happy if I can make a difference in the lives of my students." This might sound like a simple task, but in reality it requires a lot of effort, creativity, and motivation - traits that Maria-Regina Kecht tries to develop to her students when offering courses to discuss the genocide in Rwanda, or mothers and daughters in literature and film. Her goal is to open students' minds in any respect, be it towards women, towards another people, or simply towards political policies. One can make a difference, that is what Maria-Regina Kecht tries to convey, either by developing a special freshman seminar in order to make her students think about things they might not even have considered before, or just by baking Austrian Christmas cookies and thus keeping up Austrian traditions after having lived in the United States for more than 25 years.
Vienna Calling
Having grown up surrounded by mountains, Maria Kecht frequently returns to Austria.
Maria-Regina Kecht has been a professor of German studies at Rice University in Houston, Texas, since 1997. Her courses focus on gender issues and Austrian literature, particularly on post-1945 female writers from Austria. This combination of interests already reflects Kecht's strong connection to her country of origin. Not only is Austria a present topic in her mind due to her professional emphasis on Austrian literature and everything that comes with it, but Austria also represents the future plan of Maria-Regina Kecht, since she intends to move back to Austria after she retires. Born in Innsbruck, hiking and skiing in the mountains surrounding the town are some of the typical Austrian childhood memories of Kecht, who is currently taking a one-year leave from Rice University to be in her home country. However, it's not Innsbruck's mountains that evoke her desire to live in Austria, it is the capital that attracts Maria-Regina Kecht the most. Vienna calling, so to speak. For her, Vienna is a "culturally extremely rich and multi-layered melting pot and fascinating in many kinds of ways." This is why her current project entitled "Vienna: Reading and Writing Urban Narratives" has Vienna as its central point. Written in collaboration with Helga Schreckenberger from the University of Vermont, this monograph, which will most likely be published in 2011 by the Modern Language Association, deals with Vienna as an urban space and comprises two overarching thematic sections. The first one focuses on the different discourses that constitute the personality of Vienna; the emphasis of the second section lies on the exploration of broadly applicable urban themes, using Vienna as an example. The significance of both sections is discussed from historical, cultural, and theoretical perspectives, and the authors suggest different pedagogical applications modeling a genre-based approach. In other words, the monograph is about how to approach a city with its distinct biography or personality and how to help someone from outside to steadily acquire a better understanding of that place - in this case, Austria's capital. Vienna is also the city where Maria-Regina Kecht currently lives while staying in Austria. During her leave, she will teach a course on gender and migration in Salzburg and will spend the rest of the time in her favorite city. "Vienna has got everything I love. It has bookstores, coffee houses, a very lively art scene; I don't need a car, I can use the bike or public transportation, and many of my friends live there."
Since the time of ancient Egypt, societies have struggled to understand mental illness and to care for those affected by it. It was only in the mid-twentieth century that several medical breakthroughs led to the understanding that mental illnesses are diseases of the brain. Since then, a set of systematic criteria for diagnosis has been developed, and together with pharmaceutical and psychological therapies they are still central to modern psychiatry.
Christine Konradi in her laboratory.
One of the scientists searching for new breakthroughs in the field of neuropsychiatry is Christine Konradi. Konradi studied biology in Vienna, where she was awarded a Ph. D. in 1987. In addition to her core biology courses and in accordance with her personal interests, Konradi was always eager to attend as many courses as possible at the Medical University of Vienna. Shortly after her graduation, Konradi accepted a postdoctoral fellowship in neurochemistry in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Würzburg, Germany. Although she describes her time in the laboratory in Würzburg as interesting and challenging, Konradi never lost sight of her dream about being a scientist in the US: "I took a six week trip to the US in order to visit different laboratories and find out which laboratory was the best fit for me professionally and personally." She remembers her careful preparations before the big relocation from Europe to the United States.
bridges vol. 23, October 2009 / News from the Network
The OST network of Austrian scientists & scholars abroad was established by the Office of Science & Technology (OST) at the Austrian Embassy in Washington, DC, and focuses on the outreach of government-related agencies to Austrian scientists in North America. Its main objective has been to support the scientific community with information and specific advice wherever necessary and requested.
Encouraged by the OST, an independent association - ASciNA (Austrian Scientists and Scholars in North America) - was founded in 2002 with local chapters being established throughout the US and Canada. For further information about ASciNA please visit: www.ascina.at
ASciNA Activities
ASciNA Greater Washington, DC
Contact: Dietrich Haubenberger at: greater.DC(at)ascina.at
The Annual Summer BBQ at Traudl Robinson's home.
After an unexpectedly pleasant summer in the Washington, DC, area - including our annual summer BBQ at Traudl Robinson's, our group met again on September 10, 2009, to start the new academic year with a talk by Dr. Sonja Scholz at the NIH. Dr. Scholz works at the National Institute on Aging, Laboratory of Neurogenetics, with the world-renowned neurogeneticist Andrew Singleton. Her work focuses on the genetics of Parkinson's disease and parkinsonian syndromes such as multiple system atrophy (MSA). Dr. Scholz, who received her M.D. at the Medical University of Innsbruck, presented her data on genome-wide association studies in Parkinson's disease and MSA (Scholz et al, Ann Neurol.2009).
The next of the ASciNA talks, which are held monthly, will be given by
Florian Mueller, Ph.D., on October 27, 2009, at 6.30p.m. at the NIH
main campus (Building 10, Room 7S235). Dr. Mueller, a biophysicist at
the National Cancer Institute, will talk about intracellular protein
dynamics. Come join us every first Monday for the ASciNA lunch at NIH
Building 10.
To get more information, and to receive our
newsletter containing the invitation to our events, contact us at:
greater.DC(at)ascina.at
bridges vol. 23, Oct. 2009/News from the Network: Austrian Researchers Abroad
In its "moves & milestones" section, bridges presents career steps and other outstanding events in the professional lives of Austrian scientists and scholars in the US and Canada.
Robert Seiringer
was recently awarded the Henri Poincaré Award by the International Association of Mathematical Physics in Prague.
Habilitating at the University of Vienna's Department for Theoretical Physics, Robert Seiringer was offered a postdoctoral position at Princeton University. Since 2003 Seiringer has been an assistant professor in the Department of Physics at Princeton University.
has been appointed chair of North American literature and culture at Saarland University in Germany.
In 2008-2009 Astris Fellner held the Distinguished Visiting Austrian Chair at the Forum on Contemporary Europe at Stanford University and also served as visiting professor of comparative literature. She is associate professor of American studies at the University of Vienna.
More information about Astrid M. Fellner is available at:
was awarded a Honorary Doctorate by the University of Vienna for his groundbreaking work within the field of cognitive psychology.
He has been a professor and visiting professor at numerous universities including Harvard University and the University of Toronto. He was the founding chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of California at San and also director of the Center for Human Information. Moreover he is visiting Professor at University College London.
For further information about George Mandler please visit:
was recently awarded the Henri Poincaré Award by the International Association of Mathematical Physics in Prague.
has been appointed chair of North American literature and culture at Saarland University in Germany.
was awarded a Honorary Doctorate by the University of Vienna for his groundbreaking work within the field of cognitive psychology.