Gottfried Bacher is deputy director for EU-Higher Education Programs and head of the Austrian Bologna Contact Point. He has been employed with the Ministry of Science and Research since 1992. He has served on the Bologna Board and is Austrian Representative on the Bologna Follow-up Group.

Apart from the Bologna Process he has been responsible for bilateral education programs with Central and Eastern Europe as well as with EU-education programs. Bacher has been the Austrian delegate on the Education Committee of the European Council as well as on the TEMPUS and SOCRATES COMMITTEEs of the European Commission. Before entering the field of international education Bacher worked as export manager, and as assistant professor at the Department of English at Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration. He still teaches English in evening classes at a University of Applied Sciences (Technikum Wien).

Bacher holds a Master´s degree in translation (English, Spanish) from the University of Vienna. He has completed a university course in export management at Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration as well as a training course in EU decision-making processes and institutions at the Federal Administrative Academy. He also spent a year as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Kansas, Department of American Studies.

• Higher Education in Austria and the Bologna Process (October 5, 2004)

Gert Bachmann is assistant professor at the Institute of Ecology and Conservation Biology, University of Vienna, and serves as spokesman for the institute’s lecturers, assistant and associate professors.

In addition to his academic responsibilities, he manages the public relations of the institute and serves as an elected member of the conference of the life sciences faculty.

Bachmann holds a Ph.D. from the University of Vienna.

• Interview with Gert Bachmann on the Impact of the University Reform in Austria (July 13, 2005)

Christoph Badelt has been president of the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration since 2002, and is currently president of Universities Austria (former Austrian Rectors' Conference).

He is a renowned economist, specializing in social policy (issues of social insurance, unemployment, etc.), was voted as the Austrian Scientist of the Year in 1999, and is full professor of economic and social policy at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration. Besides numerous other posts abroad, he also held the position of a visiting associate professor at the University of Wisconsin (Madison, USA) in 1984/1985.

Badelt holds a Ph.D. in political economy from the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration.

• Interview with Christoph Badelt on the Impact of the University Reform in Austria (July 13, 2005)

Guntram Bauer is the director of fellowships of the Human Frontier Science Program Organization (HFSPO) in Strasbourg, France. As one of the scientific directors at HFSP, he is responsible for the overall coordination of the HFSP fellowship programs that provide support for young scientists on a global scale. He is a member of the European Network on Research Careers (ENRC), an informal network of program directors from European funding agencies.

He worked from 1998 until 2002 as a research associate in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2002 he joined the Max Planck Society as scientific coordinator for an “International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS).” He managed this new Ph.D. support program on molecular plant biology at the MPI for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany, until 2004.

Bauer holds a doctoral degree in plant biology from the University of Bayreuth, Germany.

• RE$EARCH RE$OURCES: The Human Frontier Science Program: Opportunities for Postdoctoral Fellowships (July 1, 2008)

Since 1998, Hannes Bauer has been employed in the Austrian Ministry for Transport, Innovation, and Technology. He supports the program management of the Austrian program on technologies for sustainable development and the ongoing management of the subprogram “Buildings of tomorrow” (www.HAUSderZukunft.at).

He is responsible for the information transfer and project management of R&T projects within the field of sustainable development such as passive houses, products from renewable raw materials, and renewable energy technologies (www.energytech.at).

• The “Building of Tomorrow”: Challenges of a Research Program (December 6, 2005)

Stefanie Baumgartner works in the sales department of Procter & Gamble in Vienna, Austria.

She has worked as an intern at the Office of Science & Technology from September through December 2006. Prior to this, she has worked in the Austrian Trade Commission in Caracas.

Baumgartner studied international management at the University of Applied Sciences in Graz and at the Universidad Nacional Andrés Bello in Santiago, Chile, graduating in July 2006 with distinction. In her master's thesis she focused on the interpretation of international sales law.

• Austrian Students Win European Young Scientists Contest with "Advanced Deicing System" for Airplanes (December 14, 2006)
• Introducing Susanne Seitinger: Playgrounds are not just for Children (December 14, 2006)

Paul Beck, is Grad student at the department for Astronomy at the University of Vienna. He is working on the field of asteroseismology.

• Austria joins the European Southern Observatory – ad Astra per Aspera (July 1, 2008)

Wolfgang A. Bednarzek is the press officer of Ars Electronica, a festival, prize competition, museum and R&D lab whose specific orientation and long-standing continuity make it an internationally unique platform for digital art and media culture.

From 2002 to 2003, he was an assistant in the communications department at the Austrian headquarters of Caritas, where his responsibilities included organizing nationwide fundraising campaigns, developing concepts and editing content for www.caritas.at and overseeing contributions to the organization’s child sponsorship projects in Austria. Since 2003,  Bednarzek has been in charge of communication with journalists and other key stakeholders for all of Ars Electronica’s four divisions—the Ars Electronica Festival, Prix Ars Electronica, Ars Electronica Center and Ars Electronica Futurelab.

Bednarzek is a graduate of the University of Vienna with a Masters degrees in political science and history and advanced studies in public relations.

• Focal Point—Linz (December 7, 2004)

Karolina Begusch-Pfefferkorn works at the Ministry of Science and Research and is a member of the Strategic Group on Participation.

Within the Department of Environmental, Natural and Engineering Science, she coordinates research programs concerned with sustainable development (man-made environment, proVISION: provision for nature and society).

Begusch-Pfefferkorn holds a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Vienna.

• Junior Colleagues Research and Education Joining Forces: Introducing the Austrian Research Program "proVISION: Precaution for Nature and Society" (December 14, 2006)

Harold D. Bengelsdorf was a consultant in the field of international nuclear policy issues with an active practice and extensive experience in dealing with international nuclear policy and non-proliferation issues.

A former U.S. government official, he had held senior positions with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, the Energy Research and Development Agency, the U.S. Mission to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria, the U.S. Department of State, and the U.S. Department of Energy. He participated in the negotiation of several bilateral agreements for cooperation concerning the civil uses of atomic energy, as well as in the development of the IAEA safeguards arrangements (IFCIRC/153) to implement the Non-Proliferation Treaty. He was extensively involved in a number of White House and National Security Council reviews in the arms control and nuclear policy areas. He retired from the federal government in 1982 and was engaged in consulting in the civil nuclear and nonproliferation area.

Bengelsdorf held a bachelor's degree (magna cum laude) from Syracuse University and an M.P.A. from the Maxwell Graduate School for Citizenship and Public Affairs.

*Harold D. Bengelsdorf of Bethesda, Maryland, passed away on Tuesday, June 18, 2007.

• Proposals to Strengthen the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime (December 2006)

Carol A. Bessel has shared responsibilities for the Chemical Catalysis and Chemical Structure, Dynamics and Mechanisms Programs within the Chemistry Division of the National Science Foundation (NSF).  Prior to her position at NSF, she was a Professor of Chemistry at Villanova University.

She completed a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Naval Research Laboratory and was awarded a Mary Ingraham Bunting Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies at Harvard University in 1999-2000.

Bessel received both her B.S. and Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

• Undergraduate Research Collaboratives: Turning Undergraduates into Investigators (June 29, 2006)

Juliet Beverly has been a member of the OST team since January 2007.

She gained work experience during internships at Gannett News Service, USATODAY.com and Youth Today newspaper, while being a staff writer for the District Chronicles, a weekly community newspaper published in Washington, DC.

Beverly holds a Bachelor of Arts in print journalism from Howard University in Washington, DC.

• Introducing Azra Aksamija: Identity in Architecture (December 21, 2009)
• Introducing Rainer Amon - from the Gulf Stream to the Arctic (October 15, 2009)
• Austrian Scientist of the Year 2008, Fatima Ferreira, Awakens a “Sleeping Beauty” (July 17, 2009)
• Introducing Marius Wernig – a “Big Splash” into Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (July 17, 2009)
• Introducing Wolfgang Haider -- One Man's Recreation is Another Man's Research (April 10, 2009)
• Introducing Monika Winder: from Economist to Ecologist (April 10, 2009)
• The 2nd bridges Lecture Series Event at the Embassy of Austria in Washington, DC (December 22, 2008)
  
• Introducing Michael Stadler - Life with Energy (October 16, 2008)
• Introducing Kornel Kerenyi - Building a Bridge to the Future (July 1, 2008)
• Meeting a "Tremendous Challenge in Water Managment": an Interview with Stephen Parker, director of the Water Science Technology Board (July 1, 2008)
• Introducing Daniela Pollak - Science in the City (April 28, 2008)
• Janez Potocnik Addresses Issues of Funding and Incentives for European Researchers to Come Back Home (April 28, 2008)
• Introducing Helmut Jenkner - Captured by the Cosmos (December, 2007)
• Shirley Malcom "Supporting STE Careers from Cradle to Grave" - an Interview with the Head of the Directorate for Education and Human Resources Programs of AAAS (December, 2007)
• 1.5 Million Books Digitalized and Still Counting - "The Million Book Project" Hits Its Target and Aims for More (December, 2007)
• Introducing Gerwin Schalk - Volition, Not Science Fiction (September 28, 2007)
• Not Granting the Premise-- Introducing Karl H. Pribram (July 12, 2007)
• "The Honest Broker": bridges Columnist Kicks off the "bridges Lecture Series" with Talk on the Roles of Scientists in S&T Policy (July 12, 2007)
• Bridging the Digital Divide: How One Economy Corporation Uses Internet Technology As a Means to End Poverty (April 16, 2007)

Maria C. Binz-Scharf is Assistant Professor of Management in the Economics Department at City College (CUNY), and a Research Fellow at the Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies.

She teaches courses on Organization and Management, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Leadership. Her research focuses on the processes of knowledge sharing and change in bureaucratic organizations, with a particular interest in the role information technologies (IT) play in these processes. Using ethnographic methods, she has examined informal communication structures in government agencies as they implement IT to improve their service delivery. Currently, Binz-Scharf has a grant from the National Science Foundation to explore a network of practice of forensic scientists working in government crime labs across the US. Before joining the faculty at City College in 2004, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Prior to her stay at Harvard, she co-founded and managed the Center of Excellence for Electronic Government at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and worked at the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium.

Binz-Scharf holds a Ph.D. in business economics from the University of St. Gallen and a BA/MA from Bocconi University in Milan, Italy.

• Location, Location, Location? (April 19, 2006)

Günter Bischof is the chair and Marshall Plan professor of history and the director of CenterAustria at the University of New Orleans. He has been teaching American and European Diplomatic History at the University of New Orleans since 1989 and is the recipient of the junior and senior research awards of the UNO Alumni Foundation; he was Executive Director of CenterAustria since its founding in 1997 and then director since 2000.

He has also taught as a guest professor at the Universities of Munich, Innsbruck, Salzburg, Vienna, and the Wirtschaftsuniversitaet Wien. He has taught in the UNO International Summer School for a dozen summers and directed it twice; in 2008 he directs the UNO Summer Seminars in Prague and teaches a course on the Cold War. He is the author of "Austria in the First Cold War, 1945/55: The Leverage of the Weak" (1999), the co-editor (with Anton Pelinka and now with Fritz Plasser) of "Contemporary Austrian Studies" (16 vols), and co-editor of a dozen other books and numerous articles on World War II, the Cold War, and contemporary Austrian history. He is also the editor of the series "Studies in Austrian and Central European History" with Transaction Publishers (3 vols) and "TRANSATLANTICA" with StudienVerlag Innsbruck (3 vols). Biscof's current research projects deal with the U.S. (non)responses to the Soviet/Warsaw Pact invasions of the GDR (1953), Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968) and Poland (1981), as well as a prosopography of Austrian immigrants/refugees to the United States in the 20th century provisionally entitled "Quiet Invaders Revisited".

Bischof is an alumnus of both the University of Innsbruck and the University of New Orleans, and holds a Ph.D. in American history from Harvard University (1989). In 2006 the University of Innsbruck made him an "honorary citizen." He is also a recipient of Research Prize Wilfried-Haslauer Foundation of Salzburg (2004) and has lectured in the European Forum Alpbach (2007) and co-teaches a Seminar there on trans-Atlantic relations in August 2008.

• The Austrian Marshall Plan Anniversary Foundation's Cooperation with the University of New Orleans (UNO) (April 19, 2006)
• University of New Orleans International Summer School in Innsbruck (September 20, 2005)

Charles Elliott Blumberg is a research architect/interior designer with the Division of Environmental Protection at NIH, in Bethesda, Maryland.

He has served as interior architectural expert and authority for the Division of Engineering Services and for the NIH. As technical expert, he advises on national issues as pertains to interior architecture. Blumberg manages the Healthy Building Initiative (HBI), a program developed to study the impact of the built environment upon human health and well being. In addition, Blumberg is working with the US Green Building Council (USGBC) as an NIH representative, championing the major elements and guiding principals of sustainability, as provided in the USGBC and LEED program. The research focus is to evaluate the possible impacts of buildings designed to meet sustainability guidelines upon human health. Included in the research is the review of products used in building construction and interior finishes. He has founded and was the first president of several design organizations, including: The Federal Interior Design Foundation (FIDF), The Council of Federal Interior Designers (CFID), and the Institute of Business Designers (IBD). He has taught Architectural Interior Design at American University in Washington, DC.

Blumberg received his training at Carnegie Mellon University, New York University, Parsons School of Design, and the Catholic University of America. He has also been a Fellow at the International Interior Design Association (IIDA) since 1983, and was recipient of the Pini Di San Miniato scholarship while at the Parsons School of Design.

• The NIH's "Mad as a Hatter?" Campaign - Protecting People and the Environment from Mercury (September 28, 2007)
  *Blumberg assisted with this contribution written by Edward H. Rau, an Environmental Health Officer in the Division of Environmental Protection at NIH.

Since September 2008, Thomas Boehm has been part of the Clinical Development team at Intercell AG, a Vienna based biotechnology company focussing on vaccine development for infectious diseases.

During medical school, he finished a thesis in the laboratory of Helmut Sinzinger before joining the laboratory of Bernd Binder. After medical school, he spent 8 years as a postdoctoral fellow, first working on the yeast cell cycle with Kim Nasmyth at the Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna (now Trinity College), University of Oxford, and then studying anti-angiogenesis as a new treatment for cancer with the late Judah Folkman at Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston. In 2000, Boehm completed the full-time MBA program at INSEAD, Fontainebleau, before joining the Boston office of TVM, a Munich-based life science Venture Capital investment firm analysing many biotechnology start-up companies working on new treatments in a variety of different medical indications. In August 2004 he joined Jerini AG in Berlin and worked until June 2007 as Medical Director in the Clinical Development team. In August 2007 he joined Bavarian Nordic in Munich to work on clinical development programs for several new vaccines. 

Thomas holds an M.D. from the Medical School of Vienna.

• How Can We Explain the American Dominance in Biomedical Research and Development? (September 20, 2005)

William B. Bonvillian has been director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Washington, DC Office since January 2006.

Prior to that position, he served for 17 years as legislative director and chief counsel to US Senator Joseph Lieberman. He has also taught in the area of science, technology, and innovation policy.At MIT, he works to support MIT's strong and historic relations with federal R&D agencies, and its role in national science policy. He has lectured and given speeches before numerous audiences on science and technology issues, and has taught previously at Georgetown University, MIT, and George Washington University.

Bonvillian received a B.A. from Columbia University with honors, an M.A.R. from Yale Divinity School in religion, and holds a J.D. from Columbia Law School.

• Will the search for new energy technologies require a new R&D mission agency? - The ARPA-E-Debate (July 12, 2007)

Vera Brandes has directed the research program MusicMedicine at the Paracelsus Medical Private University Salzburg since 2004.

She is a music and media effect researcher, music producer, and communication expert and co-founder and board member of the International Music and Art Research Association Austria (I.M.A.R.A.A.) and co-organizer of the Mozart & Science Congress 2008.

In 1995, Brandes started her applied music-therapy research with main focus on auditory signal processing disorders. For her research work, she received an award from the Ministry of Economics (Germany) for innovation and creativity in the fields of music and media.

• The Impact of Music - Austrian Scientists Advance in the Mapping of the Music Code (June 29, 2006)

Gertrude Brinek is a member of the Austrian Parliament and serves as the science and research spokesperson for the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP).

She also holds the position of assistant professor at the Institute for Educational Science, University of Vienna.

Brinek holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Vienna.

• Autonomy for European Higher Educational Institutions: Organizational Change Justified from a Pedagogical Perspective (July 13, 2005)

In 2005, Bill Browning cofounded Browning + Bannon LLC, and in 2006 he became a principal in Browning Partners LLC which provides strategic thinking for environmentally-responsive real estate projects, building products, and economic/physical infrastructure.

His clients include Wal-Mart's Eco-mart, Yellowstone National Park, Lucasfilm's Letterman Digital Arts Center, One Bryant Park, the White House, and the Sydney 2000 Olympic Village. He coauthored Green Development: Integrating Ecology and Real Estate, Green Developments (CD-ROM), A Primer on Sustainable Building, and Greening the Building and the Bottom Line. Browning was named one of five people "Making a Difference" by Buildings magazine, and is an Honorary member of the AIA. He was a founding member of the US Green Building Council's Board of Directors. In 1991, Browning founded Rocky Mountain Institute's Green Development Services, which was awarded the 1999 President's Council for Sustainable Development/Renew America Prize.

Browning received a bachelor's degree in environmental design from the University of Colorado, and a M.S. in real estate development from MIT.

• Showcasing the US Green Building Movement (September, 2006)

Maria Bürgermeister is the Manager of the Austrian Genome Research Program.

She has been working for the Austrian Genome Research Program GEN-AU since 2001. Formerly carried out at the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research, the GEN-AU Program Management is now located at the Austrian Research Promotion Agency.

Bürgermeister studied technical chemistry at the University of Technology in Graz, Austria, specializing in biochemistry, biotechnology and food technology. She was involved in research at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland in Espoo, were she completed her diploma thesis. After graduation she accepted a position at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Technology Graz, Austria, where she was engaged in reserach for three years.

• GEN-AU – The Austrian Genome Research Program (April 20, 2004)