The Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) Young Academy has up to 70 members elected for a maximum of eight years and must be below 45. It aims to provide a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration to promote innovative research. The Young Academy actively cultivates a supportive and stimulating environment for its members, aiming to propel their careers to the forefront of international research excellence.

Maria Christakis is a Full Professor at TU Wien Informatics, Austria, where she leads the Software Engineering research unit. Her research aims to develop theoretical foundations and practical tools for building more reliable and usable software and increasing developer productivity. Maria is particularly interested in investigating automatic test generation, program analysis, and software verification topics. Before joining TU Wien, she did research at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Germany, the University of Kent in England, Microsoft Research in the US, and ETH Zurich in Switzerland. You can find more information on her personal website.

Katta Spiel is an Assistant Professor for Critical Access in Embodied Computing at TU Wien Informatics. They research marginalized perspectives on embodied computing through a lens of Critical Access. Their work informs design and engineering supporting the development of technologies that account for the diverse realities they operate in. In their interdisciplinary collaborations with neurodivergent and/or nonbinary peers, they conduct explorations of novel potentials for designs, methodologies, and innovative technological artifacts. They received their PhD in 2018 from TU Wien and after a year at KU Leuven, they conducted postdoctoral work as an FWF-Hertha Firnberg Scholar, also at TU Wien. Their work has received several international and national awards, including the SICGHI 2020 Outstanding Dissertation Award as well as the Förderungspreis der Stadt Wien in der Sparte Mathematik, Informatik, Naturwissenschaft, Technik in 2022.

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