Maintaining research momentum in Austria

SPOTLIGHT ON AUSTRIA

How a decade of investment in Austrian science has bolstered the country's international standing

We have a unique concentration of truly world-class physicists here in Austria. Rudolf Grimm, Austrian Academy of Sciences' Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information.

IN 2009, cell biologist Michael Sixt was considering his next career move as he approached the end of his term as junior group leader at a Max Planck research institute in Germany. He was applying to established research institutes in the UK and Switzerland when a colleague suggested the Institute of Science and Technology (IST) Austria. Sixt had never heard of it, but took a look anyway. Within weeks, he had withdrawn his other applications. “I wanted to go to a research institute where I could do just science, all the time,” he says. “I was immediately convinced that IST Austria would offer me that freedom.”

IST Austria, which is based 15km north of Vienna, had opened its laboratory just four weeks before Sixt started work in November 2010. He is now one of 18 tenure-track group leaders at the institute, and there are plans to increase the number of groups to up to 50 by 2016. Sixt's wife, evolutionary biologist Silvia Cramer, leads her own group down the hall, and their daughter attends the institute's childcare facility. With his laboratory now firmly established, Sixt is convinced that joining IST Austria was the right decision. “This is a new place with no politics, great administration and exciting science. And because there is actually a position for everyone who is put on tenure track, there's no internal competition. It's very refreshing.”

Thoughtful investment

Sixt's experience illustrates the advantages of a decade of investment in Austrian science. As well as IST Austria, several other new research institutes have opened and high-tech industry has grown rapidly, particularly in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors. National spending on research and development (R&D) has more than doubled since 2000 and this year will top €8 billion for the first time — an increase of 5% from 2010 and accounting for 2.79% of gross domestic product (GDP). Of the €8 billion, 44.6% is financed by private sector business.

“Austrian research is awakening from its beauty sleep,” says Giulio Superti-Furga, director of the Austrian Academy of Sciences' Centre for Molecular Medicine (CeMM), which opened in March 2011. “Politicians have become more mindful of research innovation as an economic driving force.”

An international environment

The rest of the world has also become aware of Austria's scientific prowess. Scientists from across eastern Europe have flocked to the country since the early 1990s and it remains an attractive destination for researchers from countries such as Serbia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia, where science receives less support. Austria is also recruiting from countries with a strong research tradition, and the opportunity to help build a buzzing Austrian research community has lured several leading scientists from abroad. Three new life-science institutes created by the federally funded Austrian Academy of Sciences have all attracted external directors: Superti-Furga came from Italy to lead the CeMM; Magnus Nordberg, science director of the Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology (GMI), is a Swede who moved to Vienna from the United States; and the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology Austria (IMBA) is run by Austrian Joseph Penninger, who returned home for the position after 13 years in Canada. IST Austria's president, Tom Henzinger, is also a returning Austrian. He left his homeland in 1985 to work in the United States, but more than 20 years later was enticed back to perform his current role. “This was an opportunity too exciting to turn down,” he says.

Austria's institutes also provide a rich learning arena and are attracting international scientists at all levels. Of the 32 students enrolled at IST Austria's graduate school, only six are Austrian: the others represent 18 countries and the institute's working language is English. CeMM, based at Vienna General Hospital, also maintains a balance of Austrian and international scientists, which helps to overcome language barriers between researchers, medical staff and patients during clinical research projects. And a recent recruitment round at the University of Vienna led to the appointment of 60 new professors, of whom only around 10% are Austrian. Heinz Engl, the university's vice-rector for research and career development, says the university is minimizing potential obstacles to international researchers: “We don't require academics to speak German before they come, and we have support programmes to help them integrate.”

A cluster of innovation

GMI and IMBA are located at Campus Vienna Biocenter, a life-sciences cluster in central Vienna that hosts around 1,400 scientists. The campus grew up around the Institute for Molecular Pathology (IMP), a basic-science research hub of biotechnology company Boehringer Ingelheim, which first put Vienna on the biomedical map 25 years ago. “The government modelled many elements of their new institutes on the IMP, and now there is a great critical mass of science on the campus,” says IMP director Barry Dickson.

The campus is also home to 10 science-based companies, including the bioscience research arm of pharmaceutical giant Baxter. The company employs more than 3,900 people in Austria, including more than 900 scientists, making it one of the country's biggest employers. Researchers in the bioscience division lead Baxter's push into vaccine development; their first product, an influenza vaccine, was approved for use in September 2010.

In 2010, the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research announced a €56-million joint initiative with Vienna's city council to improve core facilities at the campus, including imaging, next-generation sequencing and one of the world's largest transgenic Drosophila libraries. The funding will also support the Vienna Open Lab — an interactive life-sciences laboratory for the general public.

The Institute for Molecular Pathology (IMP) was the first member of the Campus Vienna Biocenter, a cluster of life-sciences institutions in Vienna. Credit: IMP-IMBA

The molecular-biology focused Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) — a joint initiative of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna — is also located at Campus Vienna Biocenter. “The most important shared resource on the campus is the central cafeteria,” jokes Alwin Köhler, a tenure-track group leader at the MFPL. It's a reference to a key advantage of the campus: an open and informal atmosphere that is highly conducive to forming novel collaborations.

Networks inside and out

As well as clustering researchers together, Austria is building virtual networks, an approach that has received an enthusiastic response. “IST Austria's recruits have been swamped by existing Austrian researchers looking to establish collaborations,” says Henzinger. An initial development from such collaboration has been the RiSE (Rigorous Systems Engineering) network, funded by national science agency the Austrian Science Fund, which brings together computer scientists from five institutes in Salzburg, Linz, Graz and Vienna. Another example of a virtual network is the Ludwig Boltzmann Cluster for Translational Oncology, a research partnership between four hospitals in Vienna that investigates minimal residue disease — a condition that arises when small numbers of cancerous cells survive apparently successful treatment, sometimes leading to relapse.

Austrian research networks go well beyond the country's borders. At the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), based near Vienna, mathematicians, engineers, social scientists, economists and life scientists from more than 40 countries collaborate on policy-related research into global issues such as population aging, energy security and climate change. IIASA is sponsored by member organizations in 19 countries across Africa, Asia, Europe and North and South America, including national academies and research councils, and it receives funding from international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank.

Maintaining momentum

Austria is currently ranked seventh in the European Commission's Innovation Union Scoreboard and the government wants to boost the country's rating from ‘Innovation Follower’ to ‘Innovation Leader’ — a label which currently only applies to Denmark, Finland, Germany and Sweden. The science and research minister Karlheinz Töchterle said this year that the government's aim is to increase investment in basic research to the expenditure level of leading research nations by 2020.

The Austrian Academy of Sciences' Centre for Molecular Medicine (CeMM) in central Vienna maintains a balance of Austrian and international scientists. Credit: CEMM

The academic sector's contribution to basic research will be limited by constraints in the funding environment. “Spending on universities hasn't increased since 2008,” says Christoph Kratky, president of the Austrian Science Fund. Engl of University of Vienna says that the flat funding, combined with burgeoning student enrolments, will reduce the university's budget by 10% in real terms. The Austrian government hopes that further expansion in basic research will be driven by even greater investment from business. There are early indicators that this could be the case: business R&D funding is predicted to grow by 6% in 2011. To encourage business investment, service companies such as Techkonnex offer economic analysis of new technologies and can act as a conduit between scientists in the private and public sector.

Spending may increase further when companies who benefited from start-up funding in the 2000s start bringing their products to market. Lexogen, a biotechnology firm based at Campus Vienna Biocenter, is launching its transcriptomics platform, SQUARE (Selective Quantitative Amplification of RNA), at the end of 2011. The first pharmaceutical candidate of Zytoprotec, a spin-off company from the Medical University of Vienna, entered clinical trials in February 2011. “Our product is global, but Austria was the right place for us to build it,” says Lexogen chief executive Alexander Seitz. “If you have a good project, you will find funding to start it in Austria.”

Attracting investment

The Austrian government is also planning to increase the proportion of R&D spending that comes from international funding sources, which currently stands at 16% of the total expenditure. Rudolf Grimm, co-director of the Austrian Academy of Sciences' Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, which has bases in Innsbruck and Vienna, says that Austria's domestic funding agencies all require international referees, which ensures research is of high quality and well placed to compete for external funding. “We have a unique concentration of truly world-class physicists here in Austria,” he says.

In February 2011, Austrian research institutes had 49 European Research Council (ERC) grants (see table), and between 2007 and 2010 they received more ERC grants per population head than those in Germany and France. Innovative strategies are being introduced to keep the funding flowing in. A third of the government's funding pledge for IST Austria between 2010 and 2016 (€95 million) comes with the proviso that it is matched by third-party funds generated by institute scientists. At the University of Vienna, an internal funding scheme is based around cross-faculty ‘research platforms’ that combine disciplines to improve their funding prospects. A platform for cognitive science, for example, includes academics from computer science, psychology and even art history. “We aim to fund a smaller number of very high-quality projects well, to give them a real chance to compete at an international level,” says Engl.

From this sound foundation, the outlook for Austrian research is bright. Scientists say they hope the close dialogue they have had with the government during these fruitful decades will continue. “Austria is small, so there are fewer layers of bureaucracy, and many scientists have direct connections with politicians,” says Köhler from the MFPL. “If you can bump into the science minister in one of Vienna's famous coffee houses and talk about your science, it really helps.”