Michaela Fritz

Vice-Rector for Research and Innovation at Medical University of Vienna

Speaker

Michaela has been Vice Rector for Research and Innovation at the Medical University of Vienna since October 2015. MedUni Vienna is not only the largest medical institution in Austria; it is one of the top research institutions in Europe and provides the entire medical staff for one of the largest hospitals in Europe, the Vienna General Hospital. Since May 2018, she has been a board member of the European Forum Alpbach, chair of the delegates’ assembly of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and a member of the board of trustees of ISTA. She represents MedUni Vienna in the Research Leads Network and Policy Working Group of the European University Hospital Alliance, as well as Austrian universities in the EUA (European University Association) Expert Group on Innovation.

Michaela previously headed the Health & Environment Department at the Austrian Institute of Technology and was President of AAL Austria, an innovation platform for ambient assisted living. From 2005 to 2010, she was responsible for the program LISA (Life Science Austria) at Austria Wirtschaftsservice GmbH and was in charge of strategic planning and seed financing of start-ups. In parallel, she served as managing director of the Viennese cluster initiative LISA VR (Life Sciences Austria Vienna Region). Prior to that, she worked for several years at Infineon Technologies AG Bioscience as senior manager in business development in Munich, Germany. After her studies in materials science and PhD at ETH Zurich, Michaela was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley with an Erwin Schrödinger Fellowship.