Google joins the XISTA Science Park and partners with ISTA on research

The Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and Google have signed a Master Sponsored Research Agreement to explore joint research areas ranging from AI and algorithms to imaging methods for biomedical applications. As part of this collaboration, Google has also opened a presence at the XISTA Science Park, creating a direct link between the company, ISTA’s researchers and the start ups in the XISTA ecosystem.

“The connections of our institute to society and the economy have been of central importance since our foundation over 15 years ago. We are delighted that the ecosystem of our campus has now been complemented by a cooperation with and a presence by Google.”
– Martin Hetzer, President of ISTA

“In this collaboration, we are combining Google’s industry-leading expertise, resources and innovative drive with ISTA’s academic strength, research capabilities and agility. xista’s innovation ecosystem serves as a perfect docking station for this purpose.”
– Markus Wanko, Managing Director of XISTA

“ISTA with its strong focus on out-of-the-box and interdisciplinary thinking, covering many fields in the natural sciences, mathematics and computer sciences, is a good fit for such a research agreement with Google. We’ve seen great success in our previous collaborations and are happy to solidify and expand our work together through this agreement.”
– Lizzie Dorfman, Product Lead for Science, Google Research

The new agreement is broad in scope, enabling flexible collaborations as opportunities arise. Current joint projects already span efficient AI training, differential privacy, vision language models for climate data, and next generation microscopy capable of reconstructing brain tissue at high resolution.

ISTA continues to grow its research environment, with 90 research groups today and a planned expansion to 150 by 2036. Through the XISTA innovation ecosystem and the XISTA Science Park, this research connects directly to education, industry and venture creation. Google’s presence at the park adds another link in this chain, strengthening the bridge between scientific discovery and translation.