Three Austrian researchers working in the US receive this year’s ASciNA award. Political scientist Jürgen Braunstein received an award in the “Junior Principal Investigator” category (10,000 euros), physician Sabine Heitzeneder and mathematician Niclas Technau in the “Young Scientist” category (7,500 euros each). The awards are given by the Ministry of Education and the association ASciNA (Austrian Scientists and Scholars in North America).
Sabine Heitzeneder (37), a physician from Upper Austria, has been working at Stanford University on immunotherapies for childhood cancer since 2016.
– © Stanford Cancer Institute
Young researchers are recognized for work published in the previous year at North American research institutions. The focus is not on the candidates’ passports but on their connection to Austria, ASciNA President Dietrich Haubenberger emphasized at a Monday night press conference. The prizes awarded after evaluation by the Austrian Science Fund FWF will be presented on 22 June at the Wittgenstein and Start awards ceremony in Vienna.
mobility and network
“The ASciNA Awards underscore the importance of transatlantic mobility and the network to the research community in Austria and Europe,” explained Education Minister Martin Polashek (ÖVP) in a broadcast. The ASciNA network of Austrian researchers in North America, founded 20 years ago, has around 1,700 members worldwide.
Jürgen Braunstein (38) is honored for his book “Capital Choices” (University of Michigan Press). In it, he analyzes the constitution of sovereign wealth funds by politicians in various countries from a comparative political and economic perspective. While these sovereign wealth funds are sometimes very large, such as the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund with a trillion dollar capital, this is a critical but poorly understood area. Born in the Waldviertel, he trained as a chef and waiter before starting his scientific career. He studied political science at the University of Vienna, did his PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science and has been a fellow at the Harvard University Kennedy School since 2019, where he is supported by an FWF Schrödinger Scholarship.
Therapies for childhood cancer
Sabine Heitzeneder (37), a physician from Upper Austria, has been working at Stanford University on the development of cellular immunotherapies for childhood cancer since 2016. She looks for tumor-specific proteins that are present only in these forms of childhood cancer, but not in normal tissue. Based on this, she is developing cellular immunotherapies to specifically target these proteins and therefore the tumor. Her excellent work, published in the journal “Cancer Cell”, describes the development of such a therapy, which is used against the tumor antigen Glypikan-2. She is currently working on the clinical implementation of her work, and a phase I study with the first neuroblastoma and medulloblastoma patients is expected to begin in 2023. Heitzeneder completed her medical studies at MedUni Vienna and later worked at St. Anna Children’s Cancer Research Center and the National Cancer Institutes in Bethesda (USA).
Born in Germany, Niclas Technau (29) has been working at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) since 2021. In his award-winning publication, which appeared in the journal “Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society”, he deals with approximation of real numbers, which are used in engineering, physics and mathematics, for example. Such approximations replace real numbers, such as pi, with a simpler number, such as a fraction. After studying mathematics at the University of Würzburg, he completed his PhD at the Technical University (TU) Graz and has since worked at various universities in Britain, Israel and – supported by an FWF Schrödinger Scholarship – in the US. (apa)