Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

3.3 Achievements in AI research at 
universities and research institutions
The most significant contributions to AI research are 
published at international level by universities. A re-
cent study commissioned by the Federal Ministry of 
Education, Science and Research (BMBWF) conduct-
ed statistical and bibliometric analyses to rank Aus-
trian universities’ AI research against that of other 

---

166
Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020
countries. This revealed that the number of articles 
appearing in 
Web of Science
has risen sharply over 
the past ten years and that the debate has a dis-
tinctly European flavour. Nevertheless, there are 
signs of major catching-up processes under way in 
the USA and China as the two countries have be-
come increasingly specialised: whilst they are con-
centrating specifically on forward-looking topics 
within AI, Europe is not exhibiting any such focus. 
Austria’s strengths lie more in application-oriented 
fields of research such as expert systems, robotics, 
machine learning and autonomous systems.
154
This 
reveals that all universities, technical universities and 
medical universities and at least two arts-focused 
higher education institutions offer corresponding ac-
tivities, most notably the technical universities in Vi-
154 See Heller-Schuh et al. (2019).
enna and Graz as well as the University of Vienna 
and the Johannes Kepler University Linz (see Table 
3-1).
International co-publications reveal the network-
ing that goes on between Austrian universities and 
prestigious international institutions such as ETH Zu-
rich, the Technical University of Munich and Universi-
ty College London. Intensive research partnerships 
cover areas including neuroscience, e.g. on the early 
detection of autism, involving Graz University of 
Technology, the Medical University of Graz and the 
University of Graz, where AI research methods are 
being used to enable autism in children to be spot-
ted and treated as early as possible with the help of 
video recordings. A project involving the Medical Uni-
versity of Vienna and the University of Vienna is also