WIENER WISSENSCHAFTS FORSCHUNGS UND TECHNOLOGIEFONDS

Their core work

WWTF is a Vienna-based competitive research funding organisation that awards grants to excellent basic and applied research in the Vienna region. In H2020, they participated not as a research performer but in their institutional capacity as an RFO — bringing a funder's perspective to European consortia working on how research organisations and funding bodies should change from the inside. Both projects they joined addressed structural reform of the research system itself: making engineering research more gender-equal, and rethinking how funding bodies like WWTF co-create change with the research communities they serve. Their value in consortia is direct operational experience of running competitive funding programmes combined with willingness to pilot institutional reforms within their own organisation.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their earlier H2020 engagement (GEECCO, 2017–2021), WWTF's focus was concrete and operational: structural change at the level of individual research-performing and research-funding organisations, with gender equality in STEM as the entry point. The later project (Co-Change, 2020–2023) shifted toward a more systemic lens — institutional change across the whole research funding landscape, transformative capacity, and how innovation ecosystems collectively adapt. The trajectory moves from fixing specific problems inside organisations to redesigning the conditions under which those organisations operate.

WWTF is moving from implementing targeted equality interventions toward broader research system reform — a good fit for future Horizon Europe projects on research assessment, open science governance, or mission-oriented funding design.

How they like to work

WWTF has participated in both projects as a consortium partner, never as coordinator — consistent with an organisation that contributes its real-world role as a funder rather than leading the academic research agenda. With 17 distinct partners across 11 countries over just two projects, their consortium footprint is broad relative to their size, suggesting they are welcomed as a practitioner voice that gives reform projects operational grounding. They appear to work best in reform-oriented consortia where a functioning RFO is needed as a test-bed or co-designer, not merely as a case study.

WWTF has built connections with 17 partners across 11 countries through just two projects, indicating they join well-networked European consortia rather than working with a recurring circle of familiar collaborators. Their network is primarily composed of research universities, national funding agencies, and research-performing organisations involved in governance reform.

What sets them apart

WWTF occupies a rare position in European consortia: a sub-national, city-level research funder that operates its own competitive grant programmes and is willing to pilot reforms within those programmes in real time. Most research system reform projects recruit universities or national agencies; a regional funder like WWTF offers a more agile, experimentally-minded institutional partner. For consortia working on research assessment reform, open science uptake, or responsible innovation at the funding-system level, WWTF brings both the mandate and the operational flexibility to actually test new approaches.

Highlights from their portfolio

• GEECCO
  Largest project by funding (EUR 141,388) and the clearest demonstration of WWTF's role as a practitioner partner: an RFO embedding gender equality structural change into its own funding instruments alongside engineering universities.
• Co-Change
  Signals WWTF's evolution toward system-level reform — co-creating change across both research funding and performing organisations — and connects them to the innovation ecosystem governance conversation shaping Horizon Europe priorities.