NEWSLETTER10th edition | August 2014

NEWSLETTER
10th edition | August 2014
Foreword
With IST Austria having quickly passed through its infant years, several new and exciting streams of
development lie ahead of the Institute. One of them is the introduction of support programs for our
scientists with an interest in seeing their research translated into innovative solutions. Activities will
comprise talks with founders of start-ups, entrepreneurship workshops and a grant scheme to help
early promising ideas get going. Inspired by similar initiatives at other universities and research institutes, we will develop relationships with industry and support our spin off ideas in a way that is commensurate with the objectives and the development stage of IST Austria. Protecting our intellectual
property in order to facilitate commercial investment getting the ideas on the market is an important
part of this ambition.
A key element of these initiatives is the exchange with the outside world. IST Austria regularly hosts
talks with researchers from all over the globe. We will extend this international network even further by
inviting representatives from industrial companies, large corporates or small technology leaders that
are active in areas of mutual interest.
We have no reason to rush and will build this program step by step, in a spirit of learning and openness
to adjust as we go along. We will be very careful not to interfere with the principles of IST Austria, such
as uncompromised scientific independence, which aim at building an environment that will help our
researchers be at the top of their fields. And we strive for these new initiatives to further foster this
promising development.
Markus Wanko | Business Development, IST Austria
New ÖAW Members
EMBO Members
The Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) has
named their newly elected members. Among the
selected are IST Austria professors Herbert Edelsbrunner und Jiri Friml. IST Austria president Thomas
Henzinger expressed his delight: “I congratulate
Herbert and Jiri. As outstanding researchers both
are at the top of their fields. These distinctions are
well-deserved.”
Nick Barton and Michael Sixt, both Professors at IST
Austria, have been elected to EMBO Membership,
the European Molecular Biology Organization
(EMBO) announced on May 7. EMBO is an organization of leading researchers in the life sciences.
Edelsbrunner is a mathematician and computer scientist with a special interest in topology, a field of
special importance for shape and the recognition,
matching, and classification of shape. Edelsbrunner, who has been a Corresponding Member since
2011, was elected to Full Member of the Austrian
Academy of Sciences.
Plant biologist Jiri Friml focuses on the unique
events in plant development mediated by the plant
hormone auxin combining approaches of molecular
biology, molecular genetics, biochemistry and
mathematical modeling. Friml has been named as
member of the Chapter of Young Scientists (“Junge
Kurie”).
So far, more than 1500 of the best researchers in
Europe and around the world have been elected
EMBO Members and Associate Members. Each
year, new Members and Associate Members are
elected to life-long membership to ensure that
EMBO is at the cutting edge of life science. An election to EMBO Membership recognizes a life scientist’s research excellence and outstanding contributions. In the annual election, new Members and
Associate Members are selected, in 2014 a total of
106. On the occasion of EMBO’s 50th birthday in
2014, this number includes 50 scientists who were
additionally elected in the areas of neuroscience
and ecology & evolution. Of the four new members
conducting research in Austria two are from IST
Austria.
Vladimir Kolmogorov promoted to
Professor
Vladimir Kolmogorov has successfully completed
the tenure evaluation, and will be promoted to Professor as of October 1. Vladimir Kolmogorov, a computer scientist, is the third Assistant Professor to
have been promoted, following Michael Sixt and
Krishnendu Chatterjee. The tenure evaluation is a
compulsory evaluation according to IST Austria’s
performance-orientated career model for scientists,
the tenure-track model.
Vladimir Kolmogorov focuses on developing efficient algorithms for inference in graphical models.
Such algorithms have applications in many fields
such as computer vision, computer graphics, data
mining, machine learning and bioinformatics. Two
examples are binary image segmentation and stereo vision: binary image segmentation gives automatic systems the ability to divide an image into
foreground and background, stereo vision allows
them to infer the depth of objects. Kolmogorov has
developed algorithms widely used in computer vision. Vladimir Kolmogorov joined IST Austria in 2011.
He received an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2013, and
the Koenderink Prize for fundamental contributions
to computer vision in 2012.
Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) | Am Campus 1 | 3400 Klosterneuburg | Austria | www.ist.ac.at
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NEWSLETTER
10th edition | August 2014
cult to achieve a realistic impression. Producing an
animation with a specific behavior requires a degree of
trial and error. So far, this has been solved by producing several simulations to find the one that fits best.
To streamline this process, Chris Wojtan and colleagues present a method which blends smoothly
between existing animations, instantly creating hundreds of new simulations.
SIGGRAPH
At SIGGRAPH, the leading computer graphics conference taking place in Vancouver from August 10 to 14,
Chris Wojtan and his colleagues Karthik Raveendran,
Nils Thuerey and Greg Turk present a method for creating new animations from existing ones.
In his research, Chris Wojtan focuses on the animation
of liquids such as water, for which it is extremely diffi-
Verified faster
In a publication in the Journal of the ACM, Krishnendu Chatterjee, Professor at IST Austria, and
Monika Henzinger, Professor at the University of Vienna, presented new algorithms that reduce the
time required for the formal verification of software.
Formal verification in software design is based on
the idea of proving the safety and correctness of
Enlightening cancer cells
Harald Janovjak, Assistant Professor at IST Austria,
together with Michael Grusch, Associate Professor
at the Medical University of Vienna, “remote-controlled” the behaviour of cancer cells with light, as
reported in EMBO Journal. This work is the first application of the new field of optogenetics to cancer
research.
To understand the dynamics of cellular signaling,
researchers need to activate and inactivate mem-
Open Campus
IST Austria celebrated its 5th birthday at the
Open Campus on May 25. 1’400 guests visited the campus on this occasion and enjoyed a colourful program including the
award ceremony for the school competition,
a family lecture, campus tours and research
islands. The Governor of Lower Austria, Erwin Pröll, congratulated IST Austria on the
results in the past years and awarded the
students for their contributions to the competition on “Forms of Nature”.
Their new method semi-automatically matches two
existing liquid animations. From this, new simulations
that are intermediates of the input simulations can be
created immediately. The new animations are not only
synthesized instantly, as the method is based on interpolating between existing animations, they are also
realistic. As the new animations are generated quickly
– as fast as the frame rate – they can be produced on
the fly, with potential applications in computer games
or training simulators.
computer code by mathematically analyzing
whether a program behaves as desired - or not.
Core algorithmic problems in formal verification include checking liveness conditions, the question of
whether an application is able to execute in a timely
manner, for both graph games and probabilistic
systems. Graph games, and finding a winning
strategy in a graph game, and probabilistic systems, which analyze systems that exhibit stochastic
properties, provide ways to verify and synthesize
systems from specifications. The best known algorithms for the two problems stem from 1991 and
1995 respectively, and require O (n m) time, an expression in which n is the number of nodes in a
graph and m the number of edges that connect the
nodes. In their new paper, Chatterjee and Henzinger
present three algorithms that break this long-standing barrier of worst-case time required. For graph
games with liveness condition, the researchers
brane receptor proteins, which serve as relays
between a cell’s outside and inside world. Ideally,
this activation occurs on short timescales and in
targeted locations. However, such a high level of
precision in activation cannot be achieved with current pharmacological and genetic methods. Optogenetics uses light to control cell activity, and has
the advantage that light can be applied and removed precisely both in space and time. Janovjak,
Grusch and colleagues re-engineered receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs), essential cell surface receptors that sense growth factors and hormones, to be
under the control of light.
When a signaling molecule binds to RTKs at the cell
surface, two receptors bind to each other in a process called dimerization. This process activates
signaling in the cell. The researchers linked those
parts of mammalian RTKs that activate cell signaling to a reversible light sensor domain that they
identified in a yellow-green alga. In the engineered
receptors, the dimerization step and subsequently
present an O(n2)-time algorithm; for probabilistic
systems with liveness condition they present an
O(n2)-time algorithm and an O(m \sqrt{m})-time algorithm. These new algorithms therefore reduce
the time required for checking liveness for both
graph games and probabilistic systems, making
formal verification quicker.
cell signaling can be turned on and off by light as
the algal proteins sense light and bind to each other.
In cancer cells, activation of the engineered receptors causes changes in cell morphology, proliferation
and gene expression, characteristic of increased
cancer malignancy. In blood cells, activation leads
to cell sprouting, typical of the formation of new
blood vessels.
This re-engineering of RTKs is the first instance of
light-activated dimerization of mammalian receptors. The engineered receptors can be precisely controlled by a light intensity easily achieved in microscopes and animal models. The receptors trigger
complex cellular programs in both cancer and blood
endothelial cells. These cells represent new models
which can, for instance, be used for new methods
to identify drugs. In contrast to cancer, where uncontrolled activation of cell signaling results in features linked to malignancy, light activation of signaling may rescue cell survival and function in
degenerative disease.
Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) | Am Campus 1 | 3400 Klosterneuburg | Austria | www.ist.ac.at
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NEWSLETTER
10th edition | August 2014
Spotting Talent(s)
Highly Cited Researchers
New Graduates
The Science Industry Talk 2014, held at IST Austria
on June 3, discussed common task of science and
industry to discover and develop talents. Words of
welcome by Federal Minister for Science, Research
and Economy Reinhold Mitterlehner and the President of the Federation of Austrian Industries, Georg
Kapsch, were followed by a lively debate by experts. It was Falk Strascheg, doyen of venture capital in Germany, who possibly offered the most surprising insight: “Perfect is boring”, he stated, asking
for a more supportive attitude towards failure and
thus stimulating talents to test themselves in so far
unfamiliar fields. Edward Astle, former Pro Rector
Enterprise Imperial College London, Helga Rübsamen-Schaeff, CEO of the German biopharmaceutical company AiCuris, Marie Ringler, Director
Austria & Central and Eastern Europe of Ashoka,
and Friedrich Prinz, Finmeccanica Professor in the
School of Engineering, Stanford University, revealed
the demand for a new mindset in spotting and developing talent and talents.
Jiři Friml, Professor at IST Austria, and Eva
Benková, Assistant Professor at IST Austria, are
named „Highly Cited Researchers“ by Thomson
Reuters. The plant biologists are among 20
Austrian researchers in the list of 3’200 highly
cited researchers worldwide. “Highly Cited
Researchers 2014” complements and updates the
ISI Highly Cited Researchers lists of 2001 and
2004.
On June 2, 2014, IST Austria celebrated the third
graduation at the Institute. The new graduates –
Matthias Konrad, Damien Zuffereyn and Pedro
Campinho – received a graduation sash and pin.
Matthias Konrad studied social immune priming in
garden ants in the group of Sylvia Cremer. Pedro
Campinho worked on his thesis entitled “Mechanics of zebrafish epiboly: Tension-oriented cell
divisions limit anisotropic tissue tension in
epithelial spreading” in the group of Carl-Philipp
Heisenberg. Pedro has now taken up a postdoctoral position at IGBMC Strasbourg. Damien
Zufferey, who did his PhD in the group of Thomas
Henzinger on the verification of dynamic message
passing programs, moved to a postdoc position at
the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory at MIT. Damien was the first student at
IST Austria who did not transfer with a professor
from a previous institute.
The current list of “Highly Cited Researchers 2014”
includes 3’200 researchers with the highest
number of influential papers in science and social
science published between 2002 and 2012.
Researchers at all career levels are ranked based
on the number of “Highly Cited Papers” they
published, papers that rank among the most
frequently cited articles by fellow researchers in
their field. Plant biologists Eva Benková and Jiři
Friml at IST Austria are two of 20 researchers at
Austrian universities and research institutes
identified as standout researchers in the past
decade, with Eva Benková being the only female
Austrian scientist listed. The full list can be found
at highlycited.com.
COLLOQUIUM SPEAKERS
PAST SPEAKERS (MAY - JUNE): Natasha Raikhel, University of California Riverside (May 5) | Monika Ritsch-Marte, Innsbruck Medical University (May 12)
| Michisuke Yuzaki, Keio University (May 19) | Tony Hyman, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden (May 26) | Magnus
Nordborg, GMI (June 16) | Tom Muir, Princeton University (June 23) | Lior Pachter, University of California Berkeley (June 30)
The Colloquium series will resume on September 8 with Doug L. James, Cornell University. The IST Colloquium is IST Austria’s principal seminar series, to
which leading international scientists from all disciplines of the natural, mathematical and computer sciences are invited to present their latest findings.
IST Colloquia have a strong interdisciplinary outlook. The Colloquiua are open to all interested persons, and take place on Mondays at 4.30pm in the
Raiffeisen Lecture Hall.
SELECTED RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Efficient and Dynamic Algorithms for Alternating Büchi
Games and Maximal End-Component Decomposition |
Chatterjee K & Henzinger M, 2014 | Journal of the
ACM 61, 15.
Spatio-temporally precise activation of engineered
receptor tyrosine kinases by light | Grusch M, Schelch
K, Riedler R, Reichhart E, Differ C, Berger W, Ingles
Prieto A & Janovjak H, 2014 | EMBO Journal DOI:
10.15252/embj.201387695
Simple Chosen-Ciphertext Security from Low-Noise
LPN | Kiltz E, Masny D & Pietrzak K, 2014 | LNCS
Public-Key Cryptography 2014 8383, 1-18.
Suppressive Drug Interactions between Antifungals |
De Vos M & Bollenbach T, 2014 | Chemistry & Biology
21, 439-440.
Functionals on triangulations of Delaunay sets |
Dolbilin NP, Edelsbrunner H, Glazyrin A & Musin OR,
2014 | Moscow Mathematical Journal 14, 491-504.
Strategy synthesis for multi-dimensional quantitative
objectives | Chatterjee K, Randour M & Raskin JF,
2014 | Acta Informatica 51, 129-163.
Synthesizing Robust Systems | Bloem A, Chatterjee K,
Grimel K, Henzinger TA, Hofferek G, Jobstmann B,
Könighofer B & Könighofer R, 2014 | Acta Informatica
51, 193-220.
Isotropic local laws for sample covariance and
generalized Wigner matrices | Bloemendal A, Erdős L,
Knowles A, Yau HT & Yin J, 2014 | Electronic Journal
of Probability 19, 33.
Monitoring neurogenesis in the cerebral cortex |
Postiglione MP & Hippenmeyer S, 2014 | Future
Neurology 9, 323-340.
A full list of publications from IST Austria can be found
at publist.ist.ac.at.
Blending Liquids | Raveendran K, Wojtan C, Thuerey N
& Turk G, 2014 | SIGGRAPH 2014
IMPRINT The IST Austria Newsletter is produced by the Communications team and published every three months. You can find further information about IST Austria on our website
(www.ist.ac.at), on Facebook (www.facebook.com/istaustria) and on Twitter (www.twitter.com/istaustria).
Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) | Am Campus 1 | 3400 Klosterneuburg | Austria | www.ist.ac.at
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