ISTA receives €5M from Garrett Camp to accelerate trustworthy, human-centered AI
The Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) has secured a €5 million donation from Canadian entrepreneur and philanthropist Garrett Camp to push AI research that is safe, transparent, and directly useful to society. The gift underscores ISTA's interdisciplinary strength across computer science, mathematics, and the natural sciences-and its appeal to global partners.
Camp, co-founder of Uber and creator of the not-for-profit Camp.org, visited ISTA on January 13 to sign the donation agreement with President Martin Hetzer and Managing Director Georg Schneider. This is Camp's first gift to a European research institution.
Why this donation matters for researchers
Camp is backing environments where rigor, collaboration, and long-term thinking drive progress. That aligns with ISTA's approach: build explainable methods, stress-test assumptions, and connect theory with real-world use. For teams working on reliable, efficient AI, this is the kind of funding that compounds.
Where ISTA is focusing the effort
- Trustworthy AI (Christoph Lampert): Principled methods that make AI safer, fairer, and privacy-aware-beyond quick fixes.
- Sustainable AI (Dan Alistarh): Training and inference designed for efficiency and broader access.
- Causal AI (Francesco Locatello): Models that reason about cause and effect, how actions change outcomes, and how data shifts over time.
- Experimentally aware protein modeling (Alex Bronstein with Paul Schanda): Techniques to "guide" AlphaFold predictions so they align with experimental data.
- Privacy-preserving LLM training (Monika Henzinger): Methods to train large language models while safeguarding sensitive information.
- Large-scale inference (Marco Mondelli): Rigorous approaches for learning from massive datasets and solving complex estimation problems.
Backed by this donation, additional ISTA researchers-including Krishnendu Chatterjee, Thomas Henzinger, and Matthew Robinson-will continue advancing AI that is scientifically sound and socially responsible.
A signal of global reach
"Global solutions demand global perspectives and collaboration," Camp noted, emphasizing integrity, transparency, and respect for human values. Wolf Theiss Attorneys-at-Law (Niklas Schmidt) supported the connection, pointing to the strength of Austria's research ecosystem.
Since opening in 2009, ISTA has grown to roughly 90 research groups across the natural sciences, mathematics, and computer science, with plans to reach 150 in the next decade. The institute continues to attract international talent and partners committed to foundational science and high-impact applications.
For scientists and research leaders: practical next steps
- Explore ISTA's research profile and collaboration opportunities: ista.ac.at
- If your team is building AI skills for lab workflows, data analysis, or prototyping, see curated resources by role: Complete AI Training - Courses by Job
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