Streets populated by autonomous cars, heated pavements and hundreds of sensors that monitor movement and air quality in the public domain. Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet, had plans to make the Quayside neighbourhood in downtown Toronto the epitome of a smart city. Although the project was cancelled in May 2020 owing to economic uncertainties, Quayside can now serve as an urban-design blueprint for multinational tech giants.
The new Emerging Fields funding programme, the second pillar of the Austrian excellence initiative excellent=austria, is set to launch. For the first time, teams from all areas of basic research are invited to tackle entirely new research ideas and break free of established approaches. The programme focuses particularly on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary projects, as well as arts-based research. Up to €6 million euros in FWF funding is available to the individual teams; the call for proposals runs until 1 February 2023.
Despite the research successes during the Covid pandemic, people’s confidence in science has declined. How can we regain and strengthen the public’s trust? In a breakout session organised by the FWF and the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research entitled “Whom to trust? The Challenge of Being Excellent, Relevant, and Trustworthy” at this year's Forum Alpbach, a panel of highly-qualified experts discussed the fraught relationship between science and society and strategies to counter it.
Science and research are currently booming. From the Mars mission to mRNA vaccines – today’s researchers are consistently delivering successful results. But excellent output is not enough to create trust. Science as a guarantee of expertise is increasingly being viewed as just one voice among many. What is causing this doubt? Resolving the confidence crisis: Federal Minister of Education, Science and Research Martin Polaschek and FWF President Christof Gattringer talk with experts from science and practice at the Alpbach Technology Talks on 26 August 2022.
Six months after the launch of the Quantum Austria Funding Initiative, the first research teams funded by the Recovery and Resilience Facility NextGenerationEU are ready to get to work. The programme allowed the FFG to approve €20 million worth of funding for a comprehensive high-performance computing project, while the FWF is providing a total of €3 million to fund ten university research projects in Graz, Innsbruck, and Vienna.
In its most recent round of approvals, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) has granted funding to a total of 147 new research projects throughout Austria. Twenty innovative research ideas in the 1000 Ideas Programme account for approximately €3 million worth of funding, and €8.7 million have been allocated to the START and Wittgenstein Awards. Fifteen researchers successfully applied for funding from the ESPRIT programme, and 11 women were awarded a Richter Grant. Eleven research teams made it into the final round for Clusters of Excellence funding.
