It all began with an application at the dawn of the new millennium and the positive news of funding in the new millennium: On January 12, 2000 the official information that the application for the new Kplus center VRVis was approved reached media outlets, on June 16, 2000 Werner Purgathofer signed the funding agreement.. At that time there was still the currency Schilling and under Virtual Reality one understood "a new form of human-machine interaction".
From the initiative of the founding members and long-time scientific partners TU Vienna, TU Graz, ÖFAI (Austrian Institute for Artificial Intelligence) and CURE (Center for Usability Research and Engineering), several top researchers came together, who wanted to dedicate themselves to the topics of Virtual Reality and Visual Computing from an industrial perspective - perfect for a research center in the Kplus competence center program, which had been started by the Austrian government for exactly this cooperation between industry and science. At a time when the dotcom bubble had just burst, the launch of VRVis proved to be a challenge, but above all a great opportunity. Right from the start, the focus was on strong contact with industry to answer their questions, to provide innovative answers to industrial issues of the future, and to strengthen the technological position of mainly domestic companies.
From pioneering spirit to leading visual computing research center
At the opening event in the first VRVis office at Lothringerstraße 16, in the 3rd district of Vienna, in autumn 2000, some top-class guests, such as the then Vienna City Councillor for Finance and Economic Policy Brigitte Ederer or BMVIT Ministerial Councillor Ingolf Schädler, but also numerous scientific partners ceremonially cut the founding ribbon: VRVis Center for Virtual Reality and Visualization Research-GmbH was founded! The cutting through was accompanied by a virtual firework, which was projected on the wall.
Georg Stonawski, managing director of VRVis from 2000-2017, remembers the pioneering period: "In order for VRVis to become a real technology forge, it was important to provide free space and funding for our researchers. This enables them to realize their (research) goals and produce results for the companies. It was also important to us from the very beginning to reconcile the industry's wishes for development with the long-term research goals for future innovation solutions".
VRVis ran in the Kplus funding program from 2000-2007. In 2008-2009 it was funded within the framework of the Vienna program "Vienna Spots of Excellence". Since January 1, 2010, VRVis is a FFG funded COMET K1 center within the continuation of the Kplus program. In 2016 a further COMET K1 grant was approved for the period 2017 to 2024. The so far successful half time was confirmed by international jurors in summer 2020, which was the starting signal for the second COMET period of VRVis.
Applied cutting-edge research for the solutions of the present and future
Founded by a handful of motivated researchers, VRVis has grown to a company with about 70 employees working on innovative application-oriented research and development projects in the fields of artificial intelligence, image processing, visual analytics, extended reality, simulation and data science. As a COMET competence center, VRVis, together with its partners from science and industry, pursues the goal of building a bridge between research and industry. In 2016 Gerd Hesina joined the management board, took over the management completely in 2017 and set a new course for the future. "More than 20 patents, 60 awards and 200 satisfied corporate partners testify to two decades of top-level research. With the help of the 360° perspective of our research, we want to continue to help industry gain technological and competitive advantages. After all, technological innovations such as artificial intelligence in biomedicine or simulation in climate change adaptation are the answers to many challenging questions of our time. And we want to actively shape and improve Austria's future.
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