Christa Nöhammer

The AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH is Austria’s largest non-university R&D institution with about 1400 employees. Its vision is to bridge the gap between basic research and applied science. AIT is structured into seven centres reflecting its priorities in the key infrastructure issues of the future. The competence unit Molecular Diagnostics is part of the Center for Health & Bioresources. The goal of this competence unit is to provide novel molecular biomarkers, molecular assays, bioinformatics procedures, biosensors as well as fully integrated point-of-care devices for the whole range of medical and health applications, with a focus on non-invasive or minimally invasive diagnostics. This includes, e.g., general health monitoring, early diagnosis, disease risk prediction, disease monitoring in chronic conditions and prediction of disease progression, patient stratification, and companion diagnostics. Systems biology and systems medicine approaches within our bioinformatics group allow to investigate disease causes and mechanisms. In addition, the unit has research groups focusing on biological barriers and DNA technologies. The unit comprises a highly interdisciplinary team of about 50 scientists and laboratory technicians with expertise in biology, physics, chemistry, electrical engineering, and computational sciences (bioinformatics). The unit has participated in 20 funded Horizon 2020 projects (coordinating 6 of them) and numerous other transnational and national cooperative research projects. Up to now, we are partner in 2 funded Horizon Europe projects.