We are excited to announce that 10 projects from the 2025 call “Information and Communication Technologies” by the Vienna Science and Technology Fund have been selected for funding!

Of the 12 projects selected in this call, only two are not connected to a faculty member—both led by researchers from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at TU Wien. The funded projects represent a combined volume of over €9 million, awarded from a competitive pool of 84 proposals, with more than €7.8 million allocated to initiatives involving our faculty.

Through its Information and Communication Technology (ICT) calls, the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF) supports research that advances our understanding of fundamental questions in computer science and related disciplines. The program welcomes a broad range of projects—from theoretical computer science to interdisciplinary research with real-world applications. While its core focus is on pushing the frontiers of ICT, applicants are also encouraged to consider the medium-term social and economic impacts of their work. The WWTF supports outstanding research projects selected through rigorous criteria and highly competitive review processes. With substantial financial backing, researchers are empowered to pursue bold, innovative ideas at the forefront of their fields. By aligning funding priorities with pressing societal challenges and promoting interdisciplinary collaboration across institutions, the WWTF aims to strengthen the societal relevance and impact of scientific research.

Congratulations to Elena Andreeva, Zeta (Georgia) Avarikioti, Ezio Bartocci, Ivona Brandić, Vincenzo De Maio, Thomas Eiter, Georg Fuchsbauer, Katja Hose, Bernhard Kerbl, Laura Kovács, Matteo Maffei, Nysret Musliu, Daniel Pahr, Renata Raidou, Adrian Rebola Pardo, Emanuel Sallinger, Markus Schütz, Zeynep G. Saribatur, Dominique Schröder, and Georg Weissenbacher on this truly outstanding achievement!

The Projects

• Advancing learning paradigms for photonic quantum processors with Ivona Brandić and Vincenzo De Maio from the Research Unit Computational Sustainability as Co-PIs.

• Cross-Domain Privacy-Preserving Protocols and Symmetric Cryptography by Elena Andreeva and Georg Fuchsbauer from the Research Unit Security and Privacy.

• Foundations and Applications of Resource-Restricted Cryptography with Dominique Schröder from the Research Unit Privacy Enhancing Technologies as Co-PI.

• From Structures to Vectors: Decoding How Knowledge Graph Characteristics Shape Embedding Strategies with Emanuel Sallinger and Katja Hose from the Research Unit Databases and Artificial Intelligence as Co-PIs.

• Haptic 4D Printing for Enhanced Sensemaking by Daniel Pahr and Renata Raidou from the Research Unit Computer Graphics.

• Instant Visualization and Editing of Arbitrarily Large 3D Data Sets by Bernhard Kerbl and Markus Schütz from the Research Unit Computer Graphics.

• Learning Abstractions for Generalized Reasoning in AI by Zeynep G. Saribatur and Nysret Musliu from the Research Unit Databases and Artificial Intelligence, and Thomas Eiter from the Research Unit Knowledge-Based Systems.

• Optimal Cross-Chain and Cross-Layer Protocols (CROSS) by Zeta (Georgia) Avarikioti and Matteo Maffei from the Research Unit Security and Privacy.

• Promt: Probably the Best Moment to Terminate by Laura Kovács from the Research Unit Formal Methods in Systems Engineering and Ezio Bartocci from the Research Unit Cyber-Physical Systems.

• Verifying Without Loss of Generality by Adrian Rebola Pardo and Georg Weissenbacher from the Research Unit Formal Methods in Systems Engineering.

Jury Members for the call were Anne-Marie Kermarrec (Chair, EPFL), Alexander Maedche (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), Fosca Gianotti (Scuola Normale Superiore), Mennatallah El-Assady (ETH), Petar Popovski (Aalborg University), Alfons Kemper (TU München), Frank Wolter (University of Liverpool), and Tamara Rezk (INRIA).

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