Elia Mascolo

Elia Mascolo is an Italian biologist who uses information theory to study how genes work, and who left a US research position after four years to join the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) as an APART-USA fellow, a programme created by the Austrian Academy of Sciences specifically for scientists leaving American institutions.

Mascolo said he was drawn to ISTA, located in the Vienna Woods, by the cluster of researchers already working there, and that his highly specialized research niche meant he had to go wherever the funding and community for his specific work existed. "It's so niche, my research," he said. He noted that working with specific collaborators was also why he had spent four years in the US, and that he might have stayed there longer had the right position become available.