Mentoring Program

The ASciNA Mentoring Program (AMP) is generously supported by the Alumni Club of the Medical University of Vienna. This program seeks to develop a mentoring framework, where established Austrian scientists/scholars and professionals provide guidance, experience and knowledge to early career researchers from Austria.


Announcement for 2012/2013:


Motivated by the great success of the second round of the ASciNA Mentoring Program, which was created in 2008, we kindly ask you to apply for the new mentoring cycle starting in April 2012. The aim of the AMP is to help young researchers from all kinds of disciplines with their career planing during their (at least one-year-long) stay in North America. By definition "mentees" are Austrian scientists at the beginning of their scientific career, who already work in North America when the AMP starts in April 2012. The Alumni Club of the Medical University of Vienna is again going to support two mentoring pairs, when the mentee is an Alumni of the Medical University of Vienna.

  • Closing date for applications: March 15, 2012
  • Completion of the matching process: March 31, 2012
  • Kick-off event: April 2012
  • Period of mentoring relationship: April 2012 to March 2013

If you are interested in becoming a mentor or mentee please contact Susanne Pangratz-Führer (programm leader) or Beatrix Aigner-Köfinger (administration) via mentoring@ascina.org.

MENTEES 2011/12:


Alessandra Handisurya, M.D.

In September 2010 Alessandra Handisurya, who is a board-certified dermatologist, started a postdoctoral research fellowship at the National Institutes of Health. She joined the National Cancer Institute, Division of Basic Sciences to do research on papilloma viruses and to develop future strategies for vaccines. In 2001 she graduated from the Medical University of Vienna and became a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Dermatology, Division of Immunology, Allergy and Infectious Diseases (DIAID). From 2003 until 2010 she was a resident at DIAID. She has shown interest in medical research since 1996.
Mentee Alessandra Handisurya was matched with Edda Fiebiger, PhD.

David Stelzeneder, M.D.

Since August 2010 David Stelzeneder is a research fellow in the hip research group of Dr. Young-Jo Kim at the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at the Children’s Hospital Boston/Harvard Medical School. He graduated from the Medical University of Vienna (MUV) in 2008 and then started working on his PhD thesis at the Center of Excellence High-field MR/Department of Radiology (MUV). Around the same time he took up a yearlong Orthopedic residency at the Orthopedic Center Donauzentrum in Vienna. His clinical research is focusing on morphological and quantitative (biochemical) magnetic resonance imaging techniques for the spine, hip and knee.
Mentee David Stelzeneder was paired with Alexander Rauscher, PhD.

MENTORS 2011/2012


Edda Fiebiger, PhD

Since 2007 Edda Fiebiger is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School. From 2000 to 2005 she worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School and then became an instructor for Pediatrics. She is a pharmacist by training and received her PhD from the Medical University of Vienna in 1998. Now her main focus is cellular immunology and in particular allergies.

Alexander Rauscher, PhD
In 2005 Alexander Rauscher, who is a physicist by training, graduated from the Technical University of Vienna (TU). In 2010 he took position as an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia in the UBC MRI Research Centre. He is working in the field of magnetic resonance imaging and focuses on investigative and diagnostic imaging of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson disease and multiple sclerosis. He developed new methods of data acquisition and post processing. Apart from neurodegenerative diseases, he is also interested in blood oxygenation sensitive MRI and time resolved vascular imaging.

More ASciNA Mentoring Pairs 2011/2012


Mentee Jürgen Köfinger, PhD, who is a physicist by training and currently a Postdoc at the Laboratory of Chemical Physics, National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health(NIH) was paired with Ruth Pfeiffer, PhD a Principal Investigator at the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, NIH in Bethesda, Maryland.

Mentee Jonathan Rameseder,currently PhD-Student for the Computational Systems Biology Initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MAwas matched with Christian Forst, PhD, who works as an Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.


Mentee Christoph Mikulaschek, who has a law degree, worked as a Senior Policy Analyst at the International Peace Institute and recently started his PhD at Princeton University was paired with Alfred Gusenbauer, PhD, former Chancellor of Austria and now Chief Executive Officer of Gusenbauer Projektentwicklung und Beteiligung GmbH, Co-Founder of Cudos Advisors GmbH.