Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

4.2.4 Evaluation of endowed professorships
Since 2014, the Federal Ministry for Climate Action, 
Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Tech-
nology (BMK) – formerly the Federal Ministry for 
Transport, Innovation and Technology (BMVIT) – has 
been using the “BMVIT endowed professorship” in-
strument to support the development and establish-
ment of new topics at Austrian universities that are 
of particular strategic relevance for Austria as a loca-
tion for innovation by appointing outstanding re-
searchers as new professors at Austrian universities. 
The basic intervention logic for this instrument pos-
tulates the interdependency between establishing 
additional structures to close gaps in the research 
portfolios (and therefore the teaching offer) of Aus-
trian universities and the investments made possible 
as a result of this. The direct results or effects of the 

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4. RTI Evaluation Culture and Practice
193
funding correspond with the indicators that are “typ-
ical” for scientific organisations. The funding should 
indirectly generate (additional) visibility (for the uni-
versities, the professors and the topics). The re-
search/technology topics of the Federal Ministry for 
Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Inno-
vation and Technology (BMK) should be enshrined 
within universities and cooperation must be rein-
forced between universities and companies. The in-
strument is also associated with structural change at 
universities, i.e. technological developments must be 
reflected more strongly in research and teaching ac-
tivities by way of funded professorships. A total of 
nine “BMVIT endowed professorships” have been ap-
proved so far, with seven of these positions already 
filled.
The goal of the instrument evaluation
208
was to 
examine its effectiveness over the period between 
2014 and 2019 in relation to explicit and implicit stra-
tegic and operational objectives. The question of 
how suitable the instrument is in terms of structural 
changes with respect to priority setting and the de-
velopment of new research areas was also a central 
issue. The beneficial and/or inhibiting factors at the 
universities and among the co-financing partners 
that are important for the formation and sustainable 
establishment of endowed professorships were iden-
tified in the process. The analyses also included ex-
periences with endowed professorships in Germany 
and Switzerland in addition to experiences in Austria.