Vienna International Postdoctoral Program

ended

The VBC International Postdoctoral Program (VIP2) sets new standards in postdoctoral training in the Life Sciences by providing talented young scientists with outstanding support to conduct ambitious research projects in an international, interdisciplinary, and inter-sectoral environment. The program fosters scientific independence, encourages groundbreaking, career-making projects, and enables fellows to establish valuable contacts to academic and non-academic sectors. The Vienna BioCenter (VBC) has a 30-year history of scientific excellence and training. Four academic institutes (IMP, IMBA, GMI, MFPL) form the basis of this application. They are devoted to basic research in all areas of Life Science. Research topics range from structural biology to organismal biology, from gene expression to neurobiology, from microbiology to molecular medicine which encompass the full range of model systems from microbes, stem cells, plants, invertebrates to vertebrates. Together with 21 biotech companies, the VBC is Austria’s largest life sciences research center and a stellar example of an interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral campus. VIP2 is a 3-year postdoctoral fellowship program open to candidates with backgrounds in biology, chemistry, physics, medicine, engineering and computer science. The selection is a bottom-up procedure where fellows select two mentors and conceive a research project that forms the basis for the selection. VIP2 fosters scientific independence by selecting projects that have the potential to develop into distinct research lines and by providing candidates access to outstanding scientific core facilities. VIP2 fellows are mentored through a structured program that trains fellows for skills required to attain high-level positions in different scientific sectors. Finally, fellows can obtain direct insight into non-academic sectors through a secondment and are supported by an external advisory board with members from various non-academic sectors.