Austrian ERA Symposium 2025

This year’s ERA Symposium on 17th November 2025 provides the opportunity to gain first-hand insights into the developments toward an ERA Act, which for the first time would introduce legally binding measures to strengthen the European Research Area.
The symposium will furthermore dive into the priorities of Austria’s next Action Plan for the European Research Area (2026–2028).
Here, a particular spotlight will be put on the following areas in dedicated workshops:

• Accelerating and facilitating the use of AI in Science
• Towards an integrated structure for the research ethics landscape in Austria
• Reforming Research Assessment: The perspective of competitiveness
• From Policy to Practice: Advancing Equity in open Science
• Strenghtening Trust in Science: Ways to enhance public participation
• Value-based international STI cooperation

General information about the workshops:

This year’s ERA Symposium will bring six workshops featuring six of the 15 initiatives of the Austrian national ERA Action Plan (ERA-NAP) 2026-2028. They will be organized in two sets of three parallel sessions. The idea is to launch the implementation of the six initiatives, making profit of the presence of many representatives from stakeholders and members of the Austrian RTI community.

The workshops will focus on specific issues and are intended to provide input for the next steps of the implementation. With your participation at the workshops, you can contribute to the implementation of the initiatives and also get (and possibly stay) in contact with the coordinators of the initiatives for further steps.
We ask you to choose one workshop of each set with your registration to the Symposium, so that we can plan the facilities properly.

Please find more information on the programme and speakers in the symposium agenda. We kindly ask you to revisit this website which will be regularly updated with speaker information.

LOCATION

TECH GATE VIENNA
Donau City Strasse 1
1220 Vienna
Austria

DOORS OPEN

09:00  – 10:00 Arrival and registration, Networking Coffee

MORNING SESSION – Multimedia Stage, Ground Floor

10:00 – 10:40 Welcome and Introduction

• Opening Speech by Eva-Maria Holzleitner, Federal Minister for Women, Science and Research (BMFWF)

  Welcome addresses:

• Peter Hanke, Federal Minister for Innovation, Mobility and Infrastructure (BMIMI)

10:40 – 11:00
Stepping up: The next Austrian ERA Action Plan 2026-2028

• Barbara Weitgruber, Director General for Scientific Research and International Relations (BMFWF)

11:00 – 11:15
Change Time/Proceeding to the Workshop Rooms

11:15 – 12:15
Delivering on the next Austrian ERA Action Plan: Focussed policy workshops – Parallel Sessions, Part I

12:15 – 12:30 Coffee break, Ground Floor

12:30 – 13:30
Delivering on the next Austrian ERA Action Plan: Focussed policy workshops – Parallel Sessions, Part II

13:30 – 14:45
Networking Lunch with Poster Session and Flipchart Gallery (the latter summarizing outcomes of Parallel Sessions), 19th Floor

14:45 – 15:00
Change Time/Proceeding to the Plenary Room

AFTERNOON SESSION – Multimedia Stage, Ground Floor

15:00 – 16:00
Keynote speech and discussion by/with Ekaterina Zaharieva, Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation

16:00 – 17:30
The ERA Act – a step to the next level? Panel Discussion, Q&A and wrap-up

Panelists:

• Jean-David Malo, Director for ERA & Innovation, European Commission
• Alexander Grablowitz, Head of Unit, German federal ministry for Research Technology and Space
• Manuela Baccarini, Vice-rector for Research, University of Vienna
• Sabine Herlitschka, CEO Infineon Technologies Austria

Moderator: Maggie Childs

GET-TOGETHER – Sky Stage, 19th Floor

17:30 – 19:00 Networking & Fingerfood

For the full Programme visit ffg.at/veranstaltung