In Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Azra Aksamija had a childhood free from worries, days filled with hiking or skiing, summer vacations in Croatia, and many friends of different backgrounds. "Sarajevo is very unique in that sense. The city has actually a long history of multicultural and peaceful coexistence," says Aksamija, an architect and Ph.D. candidate in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT ).
Aksamija was 14 in 1992 when the Balkan war broke out. She recalls that, just before she left, groups of soldiers gathering on the hilltops of the city could be seen. "People kept saying, ‘Oh, it's just some military exercise.' Nobody wanted to believe that war was coming," says Aksamija.
At the time, Aksamija's mother worked as an anesthesiologist in Germany. Aksamija's father decided that the family should join their mother in Germany, starting school only a few days after she arrived in the new country. "I was so unhappy. I didn't speak a word of German. I was a young punk from Sarajevo transitioning from a city to a village in Germany, with no friends there," says Aksamija reflecting how desperately she wanted to return to Sarajevo where her life had once been.
But instead of returning to Sarajevo, the family had to leave Germany after just three months. This time they were headed to Austria, where her mother got a job as an anesthesiologist in Kapfenberg. Aksamija remembers that her transition to Kapfenberg wasn't easy either, but she found that the teachers at her high school were helpful in integrating her into the learning environment. With books, tapes, and a private tutor, it took Aksamija about a half a year to learn German. In 1995, Aksamija moved to Graz, Austria's second biggest city after Vienna, where she began studying architecture at the Technical University Graz (TU Graz ).
Graz was the place where Aksamija suddenly felt "at home" again and she flourished personally and professionally. While studying, she was also awarded Austrian citizenship in 1997. She graduated in 2001 from TU Graz with high honors and distinction. After graduation, Aksamija began looking for the direction to take her career.
Entrepreneur is the French word for "one who undertakes an endeavor." Having been coined more than a century ago (in 1852), the term entrepreneur saw a steep rise in usage in recent months, often referring to a cure for the current economic malaise. For example, in his first State of the Union speech in February 2009, US President Barack Obama referred to entrepreneurs as a major factor in pulling through this economic downturn, saying that: "The answers to our problems don't lie beyond our reach, they exist in our laboratories and our universities, in our fields and our factories, in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs ..."
But, what exactly is an entrepreneur?
According to the father of modern management, the Austrian Peter Drucker (1909-2005), entrepreneurs create something new, something different - they change or transmute values: "Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth." His fellow Austrian, economist Peter Schumpeter (1883-1950), probably the first scholar who developed entrepreneurial theories, once stated that "entrepreneurs are the ones who contribute to innovation and technological change of a nation." Later on, Schumpeter extended his theories with the hypothesis that "big companies are the ones driving innovation and economy, as they possess both resources and capital to invest in research and development."
Markus Wagner, serial entrepreneur and Business Angel who founded the business incubator i5investin 2007, is per definitionem a synthesis of both of Schumpeter's complementary theories.
"It was fun." Rarely does one hear this statement in reference to mathematics classes in school. It makes one wonder if there is something like a mathematics gene after all, giving some selected few the innate ability to see the underlying mathematical structure of the world surrounding us. If there is such a gene, Franz Luef, a Marie Curie Fellow at UC Berkeley who focuses on Time-Frequency Analysis, is certain to have it.
From an early age, Luef was drawn to mathematics, exhibiting a natural talent which developed from a playful approach to the subject to a deeper need to understand. "During high school I had some questions which I would have loved to have had an answer to, for example what is π? So, I sat down and tried to compute it. I came up with some formulas which I later found in textbooks." Encouraged by his early independent successes, he started to read about mathematics, figuring that if he was good at mathematics he would also be good at various other subjects like physics or mechanics.
This fall, the network of Austrian Scientists and Scholars in North America (ASciNA) launched ASciNA Mentoring, its newest initiative to support Austrian researchers in North America. ASciNA Mentoring is a mentoring program in which established Austrian scientists and professionals in North America provide guidance, experience, and wisdom to early-career researchers and professionals from Austria.
ASciNA Mentoring is focused on early-career Austrian scientists and scholars at the graduate student or postdoc level, working in North America. After applying to the mentoring program, early-career scientists/professionals (mentees) are matched with experienced scientists and professionals (mentors) based on the mentee's career goals, field of research, or professional area. In regular meetings, mentor-mentee pairs define and work on achieving the mentee's career goals.
IST Lecture by Martin Nowak - from Selfish Genes to Supercooperators
bridges vol. 24, December 2009 / News from the Network: Austrian Researchers Abroad
By Astrid Roemer
The IST Austria lecture series, with the aim of introducing renowned researchers and their work to a scientific audience and the general public, began with a talk by Martin Nowak, professor of biology and mathematics at Harvard University and director of Harvard's Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, presented November 25, 2009, at the IST Campus in Klosterneuburg.
IST (The Institute of Science and Technology) officially opened its doors in June 2009 and is Austria's top post-graduate research institution. Its goal is to attract world-renowned researchers in order to perform innovative and groundbreaking research using a bottom-up approach. Following a welcome by President Thomas A. Henzinger, Dr. Nowak, who is also a member of the IST Scientific Advisory Board, introduced the 130 visitors to his field of research: the evolution of cooperation. Nowak's presentation was well received, as evidenced by the vibrant Q&A session that followed.
Markus Wagner, serial entrepreneur and Business Angel who founded the business incubator 
This fall, the network of Austrian Scientists and Scholars in North America (ASciNA) launched ASciNA Mentoring, its newest initiative to support Austrian researchers in North America. ASciNA Mentoring is a mentoring program in which established Austrian scientists and professionals in North America provide guidance, experience, and wisdom to early-career researchers and professionals from Austria. 
The 