First call for ISTplus postdocs now open

Earlier this year, the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) obtained a grant in the framework of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program to co-fund an interdisciplinary postdoc program. Worth 4.6 million euros, this grant is the single largest grant obtained by IST Austria so far, and will co-fund a total of 60 two-year postdoc positions throughout the five-year duration of the project. Several calls for applications will be made over the course of the project; the first is now open, with a deadline of September 15.

IST Austria is a young research institute in Klosterneuburg, just outside of Vienna, Austria, that is focused on basic research in the fields of biology, neuroscience, mathematics, physics, and computer science, with a planned future expansion to include chemistry. In order to foster interdisciplinary research, scientists at IST Austria are not organized into departments but into independent research groups, each headed by a professor or tenure-track assistant professor. The language of research and instruction is English, and currently, scientists from more than 50 nations conduct research on campus.

Applications to the ISTplus program are welcome from all scientific fields currently represented at IST Austria. ISTplus fellows will receive two-year, full-time employment contracts with an internationally competitive salary and full social security coverage. Fellows will have access to career counseling and opportunities to take paid “intersectoral” internships with partners from non-academic institutions in industry and the public sector.

The ISTplus postdoc program is funded through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, a type of co-funding for regional, national and international programs that finance fellowships involving mobility to or from another country. Applicants must therefore fulfill the mobility criteria: They must have spent less than a total of 12 months in Austria during the three years prior to the deadline of the respective call. Further details on the application requirements and procedures are available at http://ista.ac.at/research/postdoctoral-research/istplus/.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 754411.