image: The NOMIS Foundation and ISTA are expanding their collaboration.
Credit: NOMIS Foundation / ISTA
The private Swiss NOMIS Foundation is investing €20 million to support research at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) in Klosterneuburg—a partnership that focuses on daring science. Starting in 2026, projects will be funded for five years that break new ground and therefore have the potential to deliver substantial leaps in our knowledge.
“We are thrilled to take our long-standing, successful collaboration with the NOMIS Foundation to a new level,” says ISTA President Martin Hetzer. “With this joint program, we want to promote ideas that no one has dared to explore before—because the risk of failure is high, but the potential gains are just as groundbreaking. It is this vibrant spirit of discovery that defines ISTA, and that is why the NOMIS Foundation is an ideal partner for us.”
Markus Reinhard, Managing Director of the NOMIS Foundation: “Our vision is to ‘ignite sparks’ in the world of science. We support researchers and research with the potential to serve the well-being of humanity and our planet in the long term. This requires courage and a deep desire to better understand, inspire and positively change the world through new discoveries. We have experienced this spirit at ISTA since the Institute’s founding, and we look forward to supporting it even more distinctly and effectively over the next five years.”
The NOMIS Foundation will provide a total of 20 million euros from 2026 to 2030. Each year, a handful of interdisciplinary projects with a duration of up to four years will be selected. Details of the program will be announced in the fall.
The Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) in Klosterneuburg, just outside Vienna, was founded in 2009. By now, around 90 research groups at ISTA are working on fundamental questions in the natural sciences, mathematics, and computer science.