ISTA Graduate School Celebrates Graduation Ceremony

For the first time in more than two years, the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) celebrated its graduation ceremony on campus. It was a special year, since student Anton Piankov was awarded the first Master’s degree in the Institute’s history and former postdoc Anton Mellit received the Institute’s first Alumni Award.

On Thursday the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) in Klosterneuburg hosted the biggest graduation ceremony in its history celebrating three graduating classes of PhD students. Over 70 ISTA students received PhD degrees in the past three academic years. “We are happy to welcome you back on campus to congratulate you in person on your success,” said a happy Eva Benková, Dean of the Graduate School in her speech, looking back on two years of a pandemic that made graduation events impossible. “Thank you for all the hard work! You proved that dedication, willpower, and curiosity are the foundations of scientific success. Best wishes for this important milestone in your life and career,” she added.

First Master of Science

While educating PhD students is a core mission of the Institute, since 2021, there exists the possibility to receive a Master’s degree on the way. Now, ISTA celebrates its first Master of Science graduate. Anton Piankov is from Ukraine, focuses his research on theoretical and computational soft matter, and was supervised by Professor Carl Goodrich.

ISTA offers an interdisciplinary, fully funded PhD program that supports students in becoming world-class researchers in their fields while fostering exchange and collaboration across research groups and disciplines. The training consists of both research and teaching elements, and distinguishes itself by close mentoring by world-class faculty from different disciplines. All students whose broad research interests align with those of ISTA’s faculty are eligible to join the ISTA PhD program.

First ISTA Alumni Award

For the first time ever, ISTA awarded its Alumni a prize for outstanding achievements in the academic field. It was awarded to former ISTA postdoc Anton Mellit. He is an outstanding mathematician who according to his former group leader Prof. Tamas Hausel “is working in four to five different fields in mathematics at the same time with exceptional success in each.” The Ukrainian currently holds a position as Associate Professor at the University of Vienna and has gained international attention for his work on knot theory, algebraic combinatorics, algebraic geometry and number theory. “I feel very honored to receive the award”, Mellit stated.