Funding and Research Support
Throughout the years, our research has been consistently supported by several national and international grant agencies, such as the European Research Council (ERC), the EU FP7 framework, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the Vienna Science and Technology Fund, the Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy, the Austrian National Bank Anniversary Fund, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and – last but certainly not least – the University of Vienna (several intramural grants).
As of September 2021, we are hosting or co-hosting seven projects funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF (www.fwf.ac.at) and the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (https://wwtf.at/). From the FWF this includes two stand-alone projects (P32686, P34675, "Unravelling the role of the opioid system in pain empathy", "The influence of human attitudes on canine behavior"), one international collaboration project (I3381, "The effects of stress on human social behavior" with Christian Ruff from University of Zurich), a Liese Meitner postdoc fellowship ("Bayesian integration in pain and empathy for pain", to Lei Zhang), and we are part of the faculty of the doctoral college Cognition and Communication (https://cogcom.univie.ac.at/). From the WWTF, we have sizable funding to work on dog and comparative neuroimaging ("Convergent evolution of the social brain? A comparative dog-human fMRI approach", see https://ccnu.univie.ac.at). In addition, using intramural fundings we continue the research line of the Neuropsychopharmacology and Biopsychology Group (NBU) of the late Christoph Eisenegger, focusing on the neurochemical and psychoneuroendocrinological underpinnings of social behavior, and we have obtained intramural funding to investigate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on stress, well-being, and social behavior.
All in all, we have obtained > 10 m€ in funding so far to support our research. We are VERY grateful to the funding agencies and, ultimately, the tax payers for their continuing trust in our work. We try to pay it back by thriving to make substantial contributions to both science and society.
