Laura Kovács, Head of our Research Unit for Formal Methods in Systems Engineering, has been elected as a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), one of Austria’s most prestigious scientific institutions.

Her election is part of the 2026 intake of 46 outstanding researchers recognized for their scientific excellence. This year’s election also marks a historic turning point: for the first time, women make up the majority of newly elected members under the age of 60. In total, 29 women and 17 men were elected—an important signal for increasing gender balance in top-level research. Kovács is now a member of the Division of Mathematical and Natural Sciences.

Kovács’s recognition underscores her outstanding scientific contributions and her leadership in shaping the field of computer science. Congratulations!

About Laura Kovács

Laura Kovács is a Professor and Head of the Research Unit Formal Methods in Systems Engineering at TU Wien Informatics, where she leads the Automated Program Reasoning (APRe) group. Her research focuses on the design and development of new theories, technologies, and tools for program analysis, with a particular focus on automated assertion generation, symbolic summation, computer algebra, and automated theorem proving. She is the co-developer of the Vampire theorem prover and a Wallenberg Academy Fellow of Sweden. Her research has been awarded with an ERC Starting Grant (2014), two ERC Proof of Concept Grants (2018, 2025), an ERC Consolidator Grant (2020), and two Amazon Research Awards (2020 and 2023), and most recently an FWF Emerging Fields Funding in 2026. She receives financial support from LEA (Let’s empower Austria) to promote and organize unplugged computer science workshops for elementary school children as part of TU Wien’s eduLAB.

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