ERC President Maria Leptin Visits TU Wien Informatics
ERC President Maria Leptin shared her experiences and gave insights into the importance of interdisciplinary research.
Picture: TU Wien Informatics
Within the realm of the Austrian femIT network (female professors in IT related topics) on October 4, we had the honor of welcoming European Research Council (ERC) President Maria Leptin at our faculty. After a welcome address by Dean Gerti Kappel and TU Wien Rector Jens Schneider, Maria Leptin gave insights into her experiences as ERC President, the importance of interdisciplinary research, and the role of gender biases in the context of academia and research. During her talk, Maria Leptin emphasized the need for increased collaboration across disciplines, highlighting how the challenges of the modern world require solutions that can only be addressed through interdisciplinary approaches.
Maria Leptin opened up the space for dialogue with the audience, allowing for a meaningful exchange on a wide range of pressing topics. The discussion delved into the critical role of interdisciplinary research, especially in fields like computer science, which is present in practically every part of our lives - not just since the advent of AI and technologies like ChatGPT. The discussions touched on important issues such as maintaining high standards of research quality, ethical considerations, and the impact of gender biases on career trajectories in academia. Maria Leptin’s visit sparked reflections on the future of research, its challenges, and the continuous quest for academic excellence.
About Maria Leptin
Maria Leptin has been the President of the European Research Council (ERC) since November 2021 and chairs the ERC’s governing body, the ERC Scientific Council. She is a biologist best known for her work on the mechanisms that allow a developing body to take on its correct shape. After her studies in mathematics and biology at the University of Bonn and the University of Heidelberg, Germany, Maria Leptin carried out her PhD research at the Basel Institute for Immunology, Switzerland. She then moved to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, became a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany, and professor at the Institute of Genetics, University of Cologne, Germany. She spent extended research periods and sabbaticals at the University of California, San Francisco, USA, the École Normale Supérieure, Paris, France, and at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, UK.
Before her appointment as ERC President, Maria Leptin was the Director of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) in Heidelberg, and a research group leader at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. She is an elected member of EMBO, the Academia Europaea and the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina). She is an Honorary Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences, a Foreign Member of the UK Royal Society, and an international member of the US National Academy of Sciences.
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