Latest press releases

The NEEDS Repowered project networks six European cities to make them more resilient to energy crises and avoid energy poverty. Led by AIT, Innsbruck, Karlsruhe, Krakow, Iași, Budaörs and Helsingborg are working together to strengthen the resilience of positive energy neighbourhoods - urban districts that generate more renewable energy than they consume. It is part of the Driving Urban Transitions partnership and is co-funded by the EU.

Batteries are key to the energy transition - but their development often takes years. The European research project FULL-MAP is relying on artificial intelligence, big data and autonomous synthesis to fundamentally accelerate this process - the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology is playing a key role.

On 24 April 2025, the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology opened its doors to 16 schoolgirls aged 14 and over as part of the Vienna Daughters' Day, giving them the opportunity to spend a day gaining insights into cutting-edge applied research and technological innovations. The diverse programme ranged from artificial intelligence, automation and virtual reality to energy and battery research.

Hatef Madani was appointed Principal Scientist at the Center for Energy of the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology on 1 April 2025. In this position, he is responsible for the scientific management and international collaboration of an ambitious interdisciplinary research programme of the AIT and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. Hatef Madani is researching the development of the next generation of sustainable heating systems for use in European urban areas and is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Applied Thermodynamics, Department of Energy Technology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

With TimberVision, AIT presents the world's largest publicly available image data set for AI-supported tree trunk recognition. The system recognises and measures tree trunks precisely - even under challenging environmental conditions - and thus creates the basis for the use of autonomous forestry machines. By providing free access to data sets and algorithms for research and development worldwide, AIT is promoting the digital transformation in forestry.

The AIT Austrian Institute of Technology wins first place in the prestigious Houska Prize, the largest private prize for applied research in Austria, in the non-university research category with the MEDUSA project (sustainable multi-megawatt fast charging on the medium-voltage grid). A second AIT project also received an award - the Mariella Schurz Prize honours "Electrical cell lysis for rapid antibiotic resistance tests". Both prizes honour practical research with high economic relevance.

The world is facing a key challenge: the increasing demand for energy, particularly through electromobility, requires more powerful and sustainable energy storage systems and a growing share of renewable energies.

On 11 and 12 September 2025, Austria's most relevant technology conference at the MuseumsQuartier Vienna will focus on the topic of competitiveness.