FWF ASTRA Awards: €22 Million For Up-and-Coming Top Researchers

Cardiovascular disease remains the world’s leading cause of death, with aging as its most powerful risk factor. It is not yet understood why the heart becomes more vulnerable over time, and whether this process can be slowed. What is known is that key protective mechanisms closely linked to cardiovascular risk deteriorate as humans age. In his ASTRA project, Mahmoud Abdellatif will be investigating why these systems fail and how they contribute to disease development in later life. Building on this, he aims to develop new therapeutic strategies designed to restore these protective pathways and test their ability to preserve heart function during aging. In doing so, he will be challenging the long-standing assumption in medicine that cardiovascular decline is unavoidable in old age.

Networks shape our modern world, yet the pure mathematical laws governing their structure remain deeply mysterious. In his ASTRA project, Matija Bucic explores the "pass-to-expander paradigm," a powerful framework in graph theory. The research project aims to understand how highly connected, robust mathematical cores – known as expanders – can be systematically found within seemingly chaotic systems. By advancing this classical paradigm, the project will uncover the hidden mathematical rules that govern complex networks. This work pushes the boundaries of theoretical mathematics to resolve long-standing structural challenges. Ultimately, mapping these hidden blueprints deepens our fundamental understanding of mathematics and provides new theoretical foundations for analyzing the resilience of complex systems.

Every movement we make – from breathing to running – depends on a precise communication system inside our muscles. Electrical signals trigger the release of calcium, which causes muscle contraction. Although the key proteins involved in this process are already known, exactly how they communicate remains one of the major unsolved questions in muscle biology. In her ASTRA project, Marta Campiglio will combine advanced cell models, structural biology, and physiological measurements to uncover how these proteins interact and how many voltage sensors are needed to activate muscle contraction. The findings will provide fundamental insights into muscle function and help explain the molecular causes of inherited muscle diseases and malignant hyperthermia.

The performance of music is a fundamental part of our enjoyment of it, keeping us going to concerts or listening to the same piece played by different performers. Pianists spend more time practicing than performing live, but the process of rehearsal remains understudied. To address this gap, Carlos Eduardo Cancino-Chacón introduces Computational Music Rehearsal Analysis (CMRA) as a new research direction. CMRA has three axes: musical (how pianists develop expressive interpretations in solo and ensemble practice), pedagogical (assessing performance quality and progress), and technological (developing real-time interactive systems to support rehearsal). To address these questions, he will be developing novel machine listening techniques that are capable of handling the complexities of music rehearsal.

With the ASTRA Award, Christian Dorninger will be investigating how industrial infrastructure – factories, machinery, transport, and energy systems – shapes global resource flows and inequality. Wealthy economies often import cheap raw materials and embodied labor, export higher‑value goods, and reinvest gains into more infrastructure, which then locks in further resource demand. The project quantifies these feedbacks across countries and sectors from 1800 to 2050 by combining environmental history with advanced global input‑output models and data on capital stocks. Having identified the infrastructures most associated with ecologically unequal exchange, scenarios will be developed to analyze possible future social‑ecological inequality.

Measuring distances in the universe is a long-standing challenge in astronomy. Distances are needed to determine the properties of galaxies and to understand how fast the universe is expanding, but existing methods sometimes lead to conflicting results. In her ASTRA project, Katja Fahrion will be developing a new way to measure cosmic distances using star clusters, dense collections of stars found in almost all galaxies. By studying the internal motions of more than 1,200 star clusters, she will establish them as a new and independent tool for measuring distances. This will improve our understanding of galaxies and help answer one of the most fundamental questions in cosmology: How fast is the universe expanding?

When we speak a foreign language, it is activated in the brain alongside our first language. Both remain constantly active; there is no switch-off button. But how do we find the words in the right language? In her ASTRA project, linguist Isabella Fritz will be investigating how similarities in the sound systems of languages influence speech production and comprehension. The focus is on the influence of Austrian German on English. Her research combines linguistic theory with experimental methods, including the measurement of brain activity while processing English. The project will provide novel insights into how languages interact in the brain and affect one another.

Two-dimensional quantum materials are ultrathin materials consisting of only one or a few atomic layers. Their remarkable electronic, optical, and mechanical properties, which can be designed layer by layer, make them promising building blocks for the next generation of electronics and sensors. In her ASTRA project, Anna Galler will be developing advanced theoretical and computational methods to predict their electronic and optical properties and identify promising new materials before they are synthesized in the laboratory. She will also investigate how light can be used to control and tailor their behavior. This work will contribute to the development of future electronic devices that are more compact, faster, and more energy efficient.

Animals are complex microbial ecosystems. Yet our understanding of microbial life inside animals is largely based on approaches that erase the multicellular architecture and average the functions of individual cells. Consequently, we cannot determine how a microbe’s location influences its function or how microbes regulate their animal hosts at the cellular level. In her ASTRA project, Bettina Glasl aims to overcome these limitations by combining single-cell and spatial approaches to visualize animal and microbial cells, their functions, and their interactions while preserving their native spatial context. Using a simple marine sponge as a model system, the project will reveal how spatial organization shapes symbiotic interactions and uncover the fundamental mechanisms by which microbes influence animal biology.

In her research project, Kathrin Göritzer will be decoding how the sugar decorations on secretory IgA (SIgA) – the body’s main mucosal antibody – shape the gut microbiome and protect against infection. Until now, these sugars were too complex to study. Kathrin Göritzer will use an innovative plant-based system to make fully assembled human SIgA with precisely defined sugars, then test how each version binds beneficial and harmful bacteria and affects the gut barrier and inflammation. This will reveal clear sugar-function rules and pave the way for oral SIgA preventives and therapies, including breastmilk-like formulas for infants.

Large-scale transport policies affect where we live, work, and spend our free time, and therefore play a major role in shaping the size, density, and structure of cities. In his ASTRA project, Daniel Hörcher will be combining economic theory with urban data and computing power to understand how better mobility reshapes cities and regions. The new models will identify who benefits from major transport policies and who loses, explain why some measures gain public support while others face resistance, and assess their effects on the geography of well-paid jobs, affordable housing, economic prosperity, and environmental sustainability. The project will provide policymakers with a powerful new tool to direct public investment towards mobility solutions that deliver the greatest social, economic, and environmental benefits.

Plants depend on large cellular compartments called vacuoles to store nutrients, regulate water balance, and survive environmental stress. However, little is known about how plants protect these vital structures when conditions become unfavorable. Recent work uncovered a previously unknown cellular defense mechanism, termed Vacuolar Quality Control, which helps maintain vacuolar integrity under stress. In this ASTRA project, Jose Julian Valenzuela will be investigating how this mechanism enables plants to cope with alkaline soils, a growing agricultural challenge driven by climate change and unsustainable land use. By studying both model plants and climate-resilient crops such as quinoa, he aims to reveal new strategies that could contribute to more resilient agriculture in the future.

AI systems are moving into the real world. They no longer only classify images or answer questions. They increasingly take action – in mobility, robotics, logistics, healthcare, and other high-impact domains. When AI acts on its own, performance is not enough. It must be safe, respect our rules and norms, and make its behavior understandable.

In her ASTRA project, Bettina Könighofer will be developing new foundations for trustworthy AI autonomy. She aims to create “shields” that supervise learning systems, block risky or norm-violating actions at runtime, and explain why the system acts as it does. By taking shielding to the next level, the project will be working towards an autonomous AI that we can truly trust.

After the First World War, industrialized warfare and the crisis of the “humana” sparked intense debates across Europe about what it meant to be human in an age of political upheaval, technological modernization, and social transformation. While these debates have largely been explored through philosophy and political thought, David Krych’s ASTRA project turns to theater. Focusing on avant-garde theater of Central and Eastern Europe between 1918 and 1939, it will be investigating how visions of a “new human” (homo novus) were not only imagined but also performed, tested, and shaped on stage through “new actors” (actor novus). By examining acting theories, performances, and historical documents, the project sheds new light on European modernity, theater history, and the historical making of the human.

Bacteria possess surprisingly sophisticated immune systems that protect them from viral infections. Yet viruses remain enormously successful. How do they bypass bacterial immunity and infect their hosts? While hundreds of bacterial defense systems have been discovered in recent years, scientists have only recently begun to uncover the viral proteins that counter them. In her ASTRA project, Anna Lopatina will be investigating how viruses overcome bacterial immunity by combining multiple anti-defense strategies and regulating them over time. Beyond advancing our understanding of one of nature's oldest evolutionary battles, the project will provide new design principles for engineering bacterial viruses for therapeutic applications, opening up new possibilities for fighting antibiotic-resistant infections.

Could there be a feminist metaphysics? The prevailing answer has been no. In the eyes of many feminist philosophers, metaphysics – the philosophical study of the basic structures of reality – has discredited itself through its historical complicity with patriarchy. Others see feminist philosophy and metaphysics as methodologically incompatible. In her ASTRA project, Anne Sophie Meincke resolves this conflict by arguing that a feminist metaphysics is possible if grounded not in the dominant tradition of substance or thing metaphysics, but in process metaphysics, which understands reality as fundamentally made up of processes rather than substances or things. A processual feminist metaphysics offers new insights into key issues in feminist philosophy, including sex and gender, reproduction and embodiment, and ecofeminism.

Sulfonates are an important group of emerging drinking water pollutants that can bypass conventional water treatment and reach our taps. In her ASTRA project, Sarah Pati will reveal where these pollutants come from and how they behave in the environment, helping authorities monitor them, assess their risks, and remove them more effectively. This research will test how sunlight, microbes, and drinking water treatment changes these chemicals and link those reactions to the persistence of sulfonates and formation of harmful byproducts. A key innovation is a stable isotope “fingerprinting” method to track the sources and pathways of sulfonates in the environment. Combining this tool with controlled lab studies and the analysis of real water samples, this project will build a toolkit to help keep drinking water safe.

Electrons confined in two dimensions can show qualitatively different behaviors due to nontrivial topology and strong correlation between electrons. In one example, the collective motion of electrons behaves as exotic particles called anyons. These anyons are the fundamental elements needed to realize topological quantum computation in the future. In her ASTRA project, Fangyuan Yang will be experimentally studying the electronic properties of anyons in graphene, an atomically thin layer of graphite. In particular, she and her team will be investigating how the crystal lattice can influence the formation of anyons and how to make the anyons robust. To realize this goal, they will be utilizing nanotechnology tools to create a new type of device with tunable artificial lattices using graphene and other 2D materials.