A new paper by the Siegert group, Alessandro Venturino and colleagues from the Allen Institute in Seattle, USA, published in Science Advances, shows how mice recover from ketamine anesthesia.

📢 Calling for applicants! 📢 The NOMIS–ISTA Fellowship Program offers postdoctoral researchers the freedom and security to explore high-risk concepts at the intersection of multiple scientific disciplines. Apply now: https://bit.ly/49ivtnW

Proud to share that ISTA has been recognized for the fourth consecutive year among Austria’s top 1% employers with the Leading Employer Award​ 2026. A huge thank you to all ISTA employees. Together, we continue to make ISTA an outstanding place to work, grow, and be innovative.

Congratulations to ISTA alum Soumyadip Mondal, who has been awarded the Silver Medal of the Young Chemists’ Award by the European Chemical Society (EuChemS) for his PhD thesis “Oxygen and Sulfur Redox: Conversion Kinetics and Phase Equilibria".

Researchers from the Wojtan group present two papers at the leading computer graphics conference SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles. Read more: ista.ac.at/en/news/infi...

Infinite Deformation and Shape Computation

This year, researchers from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) are presenting two papers at SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles—a leading annual computer graphics conference organized by the A...

ista.ac.at

Do you want to push the frontiers of science and go beyond the scientific norms together with supervisors and colleagues that are among the best in the world? Apply now for the fully funded, 2-year ISTA Fellowship Program: https://ista.ac.at/en/education/postdocs/ista-fellow/

Engineering single molecules to act as effective microscopic magnets could herald a new era in nanoelectronics. However, the magnetic fields generated in single‑molecule circuits are typically weak. Read more: ista.ac.at/en/news/quan...

Quantum Effects Turn a Single Molecule into a Magnet

Driving an electric current through a molecule can create a magnetic field. Yet in practice, such fields are often too weak to be detected experimentally. Through theoretical modeling, researchers at ...

ista.ac.at

Entanglement is a central feature of quantum physics. Achieving distributed entanglement between physically separated qubits could enable future advances. Now, ISTA physicists have engineered a quantum bath that autonomously syncs distant qubits using a common source of correlated photons.

A new paper by Gašper Tkačik and Alexis Bénichou at @istaresearch.bsky.social, together with Benjamin Zoller and Thomas Gregor from @pasteur.fr and @princeton.edu, has just been published in @pnas.org.

Roots avoid plant rot. 🌱 Researchers including ISTA’s Jiří Friml ‪@frimllab.bsky.social​ newly identified “saprotropism”: roots bend away from decaying plant matter—but not animal decay—by sensing acidic pH gradients in soil. Published in @science.org​. Read more: https://bit.ly/4aJkuY9

ISTA has launched its Responsible AI Program, made possible by a €5M donation from entrepreneur & philanthropist Garrett Camp. The initiative funds early-career scientists working on projects that promote fairness, transparency, privacy, and accountability in AI. Read more: https://bit.ly/4w8b6Fw

Auxin and the control of plant growth and development”, a concise @currentbiology.bsky.social​ primer by ISTA researchers Valentin Leitner and Eva Benková is out now: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(26)00517-8 #Auxin #PlantScience #PlantDevelopment #PlantHormones #Botany

A year ago, as a resident journo at @istaresearch.bsky.social through the @frontiersmedia.bsky.social program, a conversation on a computational theory led me somewhere unexpected. The story, now in @thetransmitter.bsky.social, is about how mitochondria may shape synapses, memory and even behavior 👇

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · last mo.

Emerging evidence suggests that the cell’s powerhouses do more than supply energy to the brain. Mitochondria may help synapses communicate, shape memory and even influence behavior. By @giorgiag-sciwriter.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/mitochondria...

At yesterday’s ISTA Lecture, physicist Ignacio Cirac from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics offered a glimpse into the future of quantum technologies, discussing how even near-term quantum computers can already serve as powerful tools for scientific discovery. 📸 © Anna Stöcher | ISTA

How do light particles behave when confined to billionths of a meter? How can these phenomena drive discoveries in imaging, communication, & quantum technologies? These are the questions driving Charles Roques‑Carmes, the newest #faculty member at ISTA. More: https://bit.ly/4axfYf9

We're delighted to announce the 9th Austrian Cryo-EM (ACE) Symposium - Sept 24-25, 2026 at IMP, Vienna. Organized with @istaresearch.bsky.social 🎤 Abstract deadline: Aug 5, 2026 📅 Info & registration: imp.ac.at/research/cryo-em-symposium/

Three ISTA Professors recognized among Europe’s leading life scientists. Plant geneticist Xiaoqi Feng, soft matter physicist Anđela Šarić, and biophysicist Gašper Tkačik have been elected as new members of @embo.org​. Congratulations! 👏 Read more about their research: https://bit.ly/4xUvkUV

Experiment-guided AlphaFold3 resolves measurement-consistent protein ensembles - @istaresearch.bsky.social @alex-bronstein.bsky.social @paulschanda.bsky.social @sankethvedula.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Experiment-guided AlphaFold3 resolves measurement-consistent protein ensembles - Nature Biotechnology

A generative model using AlphaFold3 as prior infers protein conformational ensembles consistent with measured experimental data.

nature.com

Connect at the ELLIS Sites ICML Fest...in Vienna 🇦🇹 on 30 June at @istaresearch.bsky.social. Meet the local AI/ML community and connect with the broader ELLIS network with the ELLIS Unit Vienna. 🔗 More info --> bit.ly/4etgJZc

AlphaFold—an AI tool that revolutionized structural biology and earned the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry—was trained on static crystal structures that dominate protein datasets. However, proteins are highly dynamic molecules. Read more: ista.ac.at/en/news/towa...

Toward Experiment-Guided AlphaFold

The AI-based program AlphaFold predicts a protein’s 3D structure with remarkable accuracy. However, it tends to reduce heterogeneous structures to a single dominant conformation, or shape, and overloo...

ista.ac.at

In our latest paper in @natchem.nature.com, we reported how the crystalline environment alters protein dynamics. If you want to get the big picture quickly, have a look at the News & Views article by Lars Schäfer. www.nature.com/articles/s41... @istaresearch.bsky.social

Molecular neighbours reshape protein dynamics - Nature Chemistry

As proteins are dynamic molecular machines, to fully understand their functions we need to understand how they move. Now, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and molecular dynamics simulations rev...

nature.com

Big applause for the recipients of this year’s Outstanding PhD Thesis Awards! 👏 Their work embodies what ISTA stands for: being open to new perspectives, connected across disciplines, & courageous in the face of complex questions. Read more: https://bit.ly/4eK4WVc @zdunajova.bsky.social​

What can glaciers tell us about our changing world? 🗻 Watch Episode 1 "The Last Stable Glaciers?" of our new documentary series "Ice, Water and Rock: Studying the World‘s Glaciers" to find out. 👉 bit.ly/4esoQ8h #glaciers #GlacierResearch

Ice, Water and Rock: Studying the World‘s Glaciers – Episode 1

In the first episode of our documentary series, we follow researchers from Institute of Science and Technology Austria into the high mountains of the western Pamirs in Tajikistan. In the Kyzylsu (kuh-sil-suu) Basin, they investigate why the glaciers in this region remained unusually stable for so long and why that may now be changing. Together with Thomas Shaw and Achille Jouberton, we get a glimpse into daily life in the field: installing weather stations, checking cameras, and measuring snow accumulation and ice melt in extreme conditions. But the data collected during these expeditions reveal a worrying trend - even here, glaciers are beginning to decline. An expedition at the intersection of science, climate research, and life in the field. 🌍

bit.ly

Congratulations to Ora Computing co-founders and ISTA alumni, Stefan Sack and Raimel Medina, for raising 3.5 million Euro seed round for their AI start-up! Both completed their PhDs at ISTA with the Serbyn group and now serve as Ora's CEO and CTO, respectively. 🔗 https://bit.ly/3QHmlWz

ISTA physicist Georgios Katsaros and his team have won a €2.8 million ERC Advanced Grant for the project SPINSWAP, aiming to directly observe and harness a special quantum connection at the heart of superconductivity. 🔗 Learn more: https://bit.ly/4oJzJ9f @erc.europa.eu​

Professor Leonid Sazanov and postdoc Ziyu Zhao just published their latest research in @cp-molcell.bsky.social.

Celebrating the Class of 2026 🎓 Heartfelt congratulations to our 48 new PhD and 4 MS graduates. We’re incredibly proud of you! 💚 📸 © Adrian Almasan #ISTAresearch #PhDLife #GraduationCeremony

Register now for the ISTA Lecture by Ignacio Cirac to learn how quantum devices are pushing the boundaries of what’s computationally possible, and how near-term quantum computers can already serve as powerful tools for scientific discovery even in the presence of errors. 🔗 https://bit.ly/3RPhzXn

A new paper by ISTA alum Lena Schwarz, Gaia Novarino, and colleagues from the Novarino group, @meduniwien.ac.at, @univie.ac.at, and @cemm.oeaw.ac.at just got published in @nature.com.

Österreichs höchstdotierte privat gestiftete Förderung für klimarelevante Grundlagenforschung, der #ZeroEmissionsAward, geht 2026 an Lavinia Saltarelli (künftig @istaresearch.bsky.social) und Emmanuel Oluwasogo (Fachhochschule Kärnten). Herzlichen Glückwunsch! 🏆👏 www.fwf.ac.at/aktuelles/de...