The 24th European Workshop on #WhiteDwarfs, hosted at ISTA, brought together more than 200 researchers from around the world, making this year’s meeting the largest in its history. A big thank you to everyone involved for making this conference such a success.

Irene Varela-Martínez, now a postdoc at ISTA, traces their origins like a family-tree detective of nerve cells. Her new study shows that precursor cells of neurons, contrary to previous assumptions, split early into two independent lineages and thereby give rise to distinct types of neurons.

New #publication by Irene Varela-Martínez and colleagues from @cnb-csic.bsky.social in Madrid, the Hippenmeyer group at ISTA, and Universidade do Porto just published in Science Advances @science.org.

Why this process differs between female and male mice remains uncertain; it is still unclear whether the male brain uses a similar mechanism, just delayed, or has another strategy.

The scientists discovered that male and female mice respond differently to ketamine anesthesia—more precisely, their microglia do. In females, recovery involves microglia rebuilding connections between neurons, a process driven by the stress hormone corticosterone.

A new paper by the Siegert group, Alessandro Venturino and colleagues from the Allen Institute in Seattle, USA, published in Science Advances, shows how mice recover from ketamine anesthesia.

📢 Calling for applicants! 📢 The NOMIS–ISTA Fellowship Program offers postdoctoral researchers the freedom and security to explore high-risk concepts at the intersection of multiple scientific disciplines. Apply now: https://bit.ly/49ivtnW

Proud to share that ISTA has been recognized for the fourth consecutive year among Austria’s top 1% employers with the Leading Employer Award​ 2026. A huge thank you to all ISTA employees. Together, we continue to make ISTA an outstanding place to work, grow, and be innovative.

Congratulations to ISTA alum Soumyadip Mondal, who has been awarded the Silver Medal of the Young Chemists’ Award by the European Chemical Society (EuChemS) for his PhD thesis “Oxygen and Sulfur Redox: Conversion Kinetics and Phase Equilibria".

Do you want to push the frontiers of science and go beyond the scientific norms together with supervisors and colleagues that are among the best in the world? Apply now for the fully funded, 2-year ISTA Fellowship Program: https://ista.ac.at/en/education/postdocs/ista-fellow/

In a purely theoretical study, PhD student and first author Wanzhuo Shi, professor Latha Venkataraman, and international collaborators uncovered a quantum phenomenon that could enable single molecules to behave as strong electromagnets—only magnetic when an electric current flows through them.

Entanglement is a central feature of quantum physics. Achieving distributed entanglement between physically separated qubits could enable future advances. Now, ISTA physicists have engineered a quantum bath that autonomously syncs distant qubits using a common source of correlated photons.

A new paper by Gašper Tkačik and Alexis Bénichou at @istaresearch.bsky.social, together with Benjamin Zoller and Thomas Gregor from @pasteur.fr and @princeton.edu, has just been published in @pnas.org.

Roots avoid plant rot. 🌱 Researchers including ISTA’s Jiří Friml ‪@frimllab.bsky.social​ newly identified “saprotropism”: roots bend away from decaying plant matter—but not animal decay—by sensing acidic pH gradients in soil. Published in @science.org​. Read more: https://bit.ly/4aJkuY9

ISTA has launched its Responsible AI Program, made possible by a €5M donation from entrepreneur & philanthropist Garrett Camp. The initiative funds early-career scientists working on projects that promote fairness, transparency, privacy, and accountability in AI. Read more: https://bit.ly/4w8b6Fw

At yesterday’s ISTA Lecture, physicist Ignacio Cirac from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics offered a glimpse into the future of quantum technologies, discussing how even near-term quantum computers can already serve as powerful tools for scientific discovery. 📸 © Anna Stöcher | ISTA

How do light particles behave when confined to billionths of a meter? How can these phenomena drive discoveries in imaging, communication, & quantum technologies? These are the questions driving Charles Roques‑Carmes, the newest #faculty member at ISTA. More: https://bit.ly/4axfYf9

Three ISTA Professors recognized among Europe’s leading life scientists. Plant geneticist Xiaoqi Feng, soft matter physicist Anđela Šarić, and biophysicist Gašper Tkačik have been elected as new members of @embo.org​. Congratulations! 👏 Read more about their research: https://bit.ly/4xUvkUV

First author, ISTA PhD student Advaith Maddipatla. Co-leading authors: @alex-bronstein.bsky.social, Ailie Marx, @paulschanda.bsky.social, and @sankethvedula.bsky.social.

By guiding AlphaFold with experimental data, an international team of researchers now aims to model ensembles of structures that better reflect physical and biological reality.

Big applause for the recipients of this year’s Outstanding PhD Thesis Awards! 👏 Their work embodies what ISTA stands for: being open to new perspectives, connected across disciplines, & courageous in the face of complex questions. Read more: https://bit.ly/4eK4WVc @zdunajova.bsky.social​

Congratulations to Ora Computing co-founders and ISTA alumni, Stefan Sack and Raimel Medina, for raising 3.5 million Euro seed round for their AI start-up! Both completed their PhDs at ISTA with the Serbyn group and now serve as Ora's CEO and CTO, respectively. 🔗 https://bit.ly/3QHmlWz

ISTA physicist Georgios Katsaros and his team have won a €2.8 million ERC Advanced Grant for the project SPINSWAP, aiming to directly observe and harness a special quantum connection at the heart of superconductivity. 🔗 Learn more: https://bit.ly/4oJzJ9f @erc.europa.eu​

Sazanov and Zhao set out to visualize this molecular “gate” with Cryo-EM and find out how it manages to ferry its bulky cargo unharmed across the membrane.

In bacteria and chloroplasts, there is a special solution to this problem: the Tat system. Scientists already knew that in E. coli, it consists of three building blocks, but exactly how the assembled system looks and how it manages to safely move large proteins through a membrane remained a mystery.

Professor Leonid Sazanov and postdoc Ziyu Zhao just published their latest research in @cp-molcell.bsky.social.

Celebrating the Class of 2026 🎓 Heartfelt congratulations to our 48 new PhD and 4 MS graduates. We’re incredibly proud of you! 💚 📸 © Adrian Almasan #ISTAresearch #PhDLife #GraduationCeremony

Register now for the ISTA Lecture by Ignacio Cirac to learn how quantum devices are pushing the boundaries of what’s computationally possible, and how near-term quantum computers can already serve as powerful tools for scientific discovery even in the presence of errors. 🔗 https://bit.ly/3RPhzXn

By comparing molecular changes across several genetic models and developmental stages, this project aimed to identify where these mutations share biological pathways and where they leave their own distinct molecular signature.

For her PhD project, she asked whether different autism-associated genetic mutations might nevertheless affect brain development in related ways.