Unfortunately, due to the high volume of applications, we will not be able to process your application via e-mail. Please submit your application through our Professors Applications website. You can find all relevant information here

In order to complete your registration, please check your mailbox (also your spam mailbox) for an e-mail that you should have received after you registered at our online application system. In this e-mail you find a link confirming your registration. Your login will not work unless you confirm your registration.

If this doesn’t work, please contact us for further steps.

Please carefully check your entries at e.g. personal data, application data, degrees and affiliations part and the referee section again.
Please also make sure that you have selected one main discipline and only three sub-disciplines at the section of “Application data”.
If this does not lead to success, please send us a screenshot with the exact error message.

You cannot access your application because it has already been processed. Please send the new documents to the email address.

Please send us the document you wish to replace via e-mail and we will update your application.

Our system requires to name at least three people (max. four) who can provide reference letters on your behalf. These could include also people with whom you have collaborated. Please feel free to use any selection criteria you deem best for your application.
Should your application pass the first round of selection we will ask your referees via e-mail to send a reference letter.

The type of an Associate Professor position does not exist at our institute. Currently, we only offer positions of an Assistant Professor or a Professor. We encourage researchers with six or more years of leading an independent research group to apply for the position of a Professor.

The research statement should include a description of your most important scientific achievements (max. two pages) and planned future research activities (max. four pages); the list of references is excluded from the page count. Please note that this document will be part of the information sent to the referees and potentially also to independent reviewers.

You could address your cover letter to an area chair of the relevant research area. However, there are also other options to whom you could address the cover letter e.g.: Dear recruiting committee, Dear search committee, Dear ISTA faculty or To whom it may concern, etc.

Please send us the name of the institution that you wish to add in your application via e-mail, so we can update our database. After that, it will be available to select as an institution in the web application form.

Please send us the name of the institution/affiliation that you think might be wrong in the database via e-mail. If necessary, it will be corrected.

ISTA is looking for Professors and Assistant Professors in Chemistry, Computer Science, Data Science, Earth Science, Life Sciences, Mathematics, and Soft Matter Physics (see focus fields on https://ista.ac.at/en/jobs/faculty/).

In our search for researchers, a central selection criterion is the scientific quality, rather than specific topics within the above mentioned fields. We aim at recruiting outstanding scientists who are among the leaders in their field. As we are recruiting researchers from different scientific fields, the overall process requires a coordinated strategy for selecting the best candidates while ensuring that we will be able to provide them with the necessary state-of-the-art infrastructure and avoid scientific isolation. This is achieved by creating clusters of research groups in related fields and groups that have links across different disciplines. Therefore, based the scientific quality and strategic considerations, it will be decided in an elaborated selection process if a candidate is invited for an interview on campus.

Yes, ISTA accepts applications from candidates who have recently obtained their PhD degree.

Applications will be evaluated once the deadline is over. Due to the high number of applications received, decisions will not be reached until later this year or earlier in the following year.

ISTA is a growing institute. Currently, there are more than 80 groups on campus. By 2036, we aim to have 150 groups, thus planning to broaden our research portfolio.

As mentioned in the advertisement, our successful candidates are offered an attractive and competitive salary. Concrete amounts, however, will be negotiated individually between the Institute and the professor receiving an offer. In any case, it will enable a high standard of living in Austria.

English is the official language of communication and teaching at ISTA. Nevertheless, we also offer free German classes for employees of our institute since this can be useful for everyday life outside of the campus.

As mentioned in the advertisement, we offer a generous start-up budget and substantial annual base funding. The concrete amounts, however, depend on the costs of starting and operating the laboratory, and the infrastructure needed, thus both startup budget and annual base funding will be individually negotiated between the Institute and the professor receiving an offer.

Our professors are expected to participate fully and regularly in the teaching activities of the Graduate School of ISTA. The education of PhD students is one of the core missions of the Institute. Every professor is expected to teach one semester-long course (the equivalent of 6 ECTS credit points) per year.

We consider double applications of dual career couples, which would imply individual applications for two positions. Dual Career Partners seeking employment with ISTA must follow the same application and selection process as other applicants. Furthermore, the same selection and decision criteria apply to dual career partners as to other applicants. You can find more info about the mentioned dual career packages at here.

ISTA has no fixed starting dates. This will always be discussed individually, and adapted with the selected candidates.

By default, Assistant Professors are not entitled to a sabbatical leave, but in case a visit is essential for conducting research, exemptions can be granted to a certain extend.

We encourage all applicants to mention career breaks, regardless of the reasons (such as parental leave, illness, etc.). You can do so via the online application tool on the “Comment” section on the “Application data” tab, or indicate it on your CV. Only when we are aware of these breaks can we make a fair comparison among applicants. There is, of course, no obligation to mention the reason for the career break, if you prefer to keep it confidential.

As stated on our website, ISTA can only be listed as host institution on your ERC (or other grant) application once ISTA has offered you a position as (Assistant) Professor. However, should you wish to apply to ISTA at a later time, please note that those grants can also be transferred to other institutions.

As we prefer to process all applications, whenever possible, in parallel, we do not accept applications for faculty positions after the deadlines mentioned on https://ista.ac.at/en/jobs/faculty/. After these deadlines, we invite candidates to apply to the following call for applications.