Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

168
Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020
ELLIS locations on the basis of their academic ex-
cellence.
159
Each of the locations has committed to 
providing local funding of at least €1.5 million per 
year for at least five years, meaning that over €200 
million will be invested in AI research in total over 
the next five years at the 17 locations in Europe and 
Israel. The Austrian government’s current work pro-
gramme for 2020–2024 also includes the following 
measure based on uniko’s recommendation: 
“Ex-
panding a research data centre equipped with suf-
ficient processing capacity (particularly graphics 
processing units) to ensure that cutting-edge re-
search – especially in the field of data-based AI – 
can continue (building on the Vienna Scientific 
Cluster).”
160
AI is also anchored in some research activities at 
universities of applied sciences. One highlight has 
been the creation of the Big Data Analytics & Artifi-
cial Intelligence Research Center, an application-fo-
cused research and innovation centre at FH Joanne-
um University of Applied Sciences, as part of the 
159 See 
https://ist.ac.at/de/news/jku-ist-austria-join-ellis-network/
 
160 See Federal Chancellery (BKA) (2020, 323).
COIN programme line, which was supported by the 
Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs 
(BMDW) and administered by the Austrian Research 
Promotion Agency (FFG); another has been Universi-
ty of Applied Sciences Upper Austria’s introduction 
of a supercomputer for AI and machine learning in 
research and teaching in 2019.
However, AI has not just become an integral part 
of the work done at universities, a great many re-
search institutions are now boasting AI expertise 
too. Fig. 3-2 provides an overview of this and shows 
the geographical distribution of institutions that in-
clude significant AI competencies or AI projects on 
their website.
Many of the above research institutions have a 
wide range of activities and areas of expertise and 
are thus not only assigned to computer-science-re-
lated subjects. In the past, it is fair to say that only a 
small handful of institutions in Austria developed 
solutions that were explicitly AI-driven. Nowadays, 
by contrast, the issue has greater topical relevance