Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

2.3.3 Special events in 2019 and outlook
Examples of research results from 2019
• Quantum physicists at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) are helping shape the future of com-
munication. Previous experiments teleported binary states, known as qubits. An Austrian-Chinese team 
has now succeeded in sending three-dimensional quantum states for the first time. One of the potential 
benefits of these qutrits: they could help connect quantum computers together at higher information 
rates. 
• Organoids enable research on models that are very similar to real tissue in order to investigate the 
causes of illness in detail. Molecular biologists at the OeAW’s Institute of Molecular Biotechnology 
(IMBA) have succeeded in developing human blood cells from stem cells. With tissue engineering in the 
lab, it is possible to directly use human tissue to reproduce and observe the production of illness in the 
vascular system, e.g. as a consequence of diabetes. This opens up new opportunities for understanding 
the causes of these illnesses and eventually developing therapies. 
• Religion increasingly stands at the centre of global controversies surrounding societal values. A study 
of history is essential to understand today’s positions. The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) Specific Re-
search Area “Visions of Community”, which was located at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) 
and brought to a successful completion in 2019 after an eight-year run, took a multidisciplinary ap-
proach to the question of how religion and politics influenced each other during the Middle Ages not 
only in Europe but in the Arabic world and Asia as well. This global historical approach was able to 
unlock many new insights, which can be found in the roughly 60 books and hundreds of other publica-
tions that have resulted from the programme.
With the 2015 founding of the Austrian Center for Digital Humanities (ACDH), the presentation of the 
Digital Humanities strategy and the development and implementation of the funding programmes go!dig-
ital and Digital Humanities: “Langzeitprojekte zum kulturellen Erbe” (Long-Term Projects on Our Cultural 
Inheritance), the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) has helped establish Austria as an active home to 
research in the digital humanities. In 2019, the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) concluded a consor-
tium agreement with a number of universities within the framework of CLARIAH-AT. 

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