Women* in Science

International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2026 at the Faculty of Mathematics

The International Day of Women and Girls in Science is a UN initiative to draw attention to gender inequality in the natural sciences.

The Faculty of Mathematics is participating this year with events, job offers and information about our female researchers.

Gaining Traction

The first known woman in the field of mathematics was Hypatia (c. 360–415) from Alexandria in Egypt in late antiquity. Among other things, she studied geometry, number theory and astronomy. Hypatia was probably also the first woman to teach mathematics.

There are almost no known female mathematicians from the Middle Ages and early modern period. It was not until the second half of the 19th century that women were gradually able to assert their right to education and enter the natural sciences.

At the University of Vienna, Cäcilie Wendt was the first woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics and natural sciences: she received her doctorate in 1900. Wendt was only the third woman ever to complete a doctorate at our university.

Austria's first famous female mathematician was Olga Taussky-Todd. After studying at the University of Vienna, her research into algebra and matrix theory took her to Cambridge and Caltech, among other places.

Maria Hoffmann-Ostenhof became the first woman to obtain a habilitation at our faculty in 1991 – at that time still the Department of Mathematics. A year later, she also became the first associate professor of mathematics at the University of Vienna.

In 2010, Goulnara Arzhantseva became the first woman to be appointed full professor of mathematics. There are now eight full professors at our faculty – two of whom are also active as vice-deans in the faculty management.

A total of around 90 women are involved in research and teaching at our faculty. Among them are, for example:

Professor & Vice Dean

Sara Merino Aceituno

I apply mathematics to investigate problems arising in biology and frequently collaborates with experimental research groups. I studied mathematics in Spain and later in France through the Erasmus program, before completing my PhD in the UK. Since 2018, I have been working at the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Vienna, where I enjoy teaching mathematics, developing new mathematical ideas, and sharing mathematics with others.

Assistant Professor

Himani Sachdeva

I use mathematical models to understand how genetic variation is maintained in natural populations, as well as long-term population outcomes such adaptation, speciation, and extinction. I am also interested in understanding to what extent we can disentangle the signatures of different processes -- natural selection, demography and spatial population structure, in genomic data. This is especially relevant given the increasing availability of large numbers of genome sequences from a variety of organisms, and ongoing efforts to make inferences and predictions from this data. My research lies at the intersection of mathematics and biology, and greatly benefits from interaction with both disciplines.

Project Leader (Postdoc)

Anupam Gumber

My research interests lie at the intersection of Applied Harmonic Analysis and Machine Learning, with a focus on functional analysis, inverse problems, operator learning, and the mathematics of data science.

Project Employee Praedoc

Inés Vega González

I am a Ph.D. candidate at the Mathematics department of the University of Vienna. My main interest is Mathematical General Relativity, and my research focuses in finding low regularity extensions of the singularity theorems using elliptic regularity. Since a young age I was interested in science, and understanding the way our universe works. That passion led me to complete a bachelor in physics, and through it I discovered how Mathematics holds the key that help us unravel the models and system that dominate the world around us. This field is heavily male-dominated, and the higher you go up the academic ladder, the more prevalent it is, that is why I specially admire the intelligent women that manage to make great discoveries and work hard on a environment that does not feel very welcoming at times. I hope in the future we can see a more diverse community that help science advance and evolve further.

Professor

Olga Mula

Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) are a powerful mathematical tool for describing the fundamental laws of nature. They play a crucial role in understanding countless phenomena, including key modern research areas such as the dynamics of machine learning algorithms or the behavior of quantum computers. However, solving PDEs exactly is often impossible, so we must rely on computer-based approximations. Ensuring these computations are both accurate and applicable to real-world problems is the core focus of my research.

University Assistant Postdoc

Waltraud Huyer

My research interests are optimization (global and local optimization) and numerical analysis. Currently I am also doing quite a lot of bachelor thesis supervisions, mainly for BEd.

Project Leader (Postdoc)

Iryna Karpenko

My current research interests belong to Mathematical Physics and are related to integrable nonlinear equations. In particular, I am interested in direct and inverse spectral and scattering theory,
inverse scattering transform (particularly, in the form of the Riemann–Hilbert problem) for integrable
nonlinear partial differential equations, and long time asymptotics of nonlinear wave
equations.

Project Employee Praedoc

Denise Schmutz

I work on theoretical models that show how the rotation and translation of objects – such as biological cells – can be reconstructed from temporal tomography data. I am particularly fascinated by mathematical analysis: when is this reconstruction unambiguous, for which objects does it work, and where do symmetries cause problems?

Professor

Vera Vértesi

My work focuses on classification and structural questions for contact 3-manifolds and the Legendrian and transverse knots they contain, using tools from Heegaard Floer homology and contact homology. Apart from working with classical techniques such as convex surfaces, open books, and Heegaard Floer homology, I am interested in extending ideas from three-dimensional contact topology to higher dimensions.

University Assistant Postdoc

Kata Sebök

I'm interested in students' (esp. preservice mathematics teachers') relationships with and impressions of mathematics: What do they consider to be 'mathematics', and how do they experience themselves in relation to it? On the other hand, I have been collaborating with Felix Lensing from FU Berlin for multiple years now, applying the philosopher Edmund Husserl's eidetic method to investigate some fundamental questions relevant to mathematics education: What does it mean to 'understand' or 'know' a piece of mathematics? How can we as researchers justify normative statements about what mathematical learning should look like?

University Assistant Praedoc

Marta Sálamo Candal

I am a second year Ph.D. student at the University of Vienna, working in the intersection of geometry, measure theory, and general relativity. In particular, I am interested in understanding curvature bounds in spacetimes using tools from optimal transport.

Project Employee Praedoc

Melda Akyazi

My work sits at the crossroads of probability, combinatorics, and mathematical physics. By exploring connections between combinatorial objects and models from statistical mechanics, I aim to understand why the same phenomena, such as limit shapes and universal fluctuation behaviour, arise across seemingly different physical and mathematical systems.

University Assistant Praedoc

Chiara Schindler

I work on stochastic differential equations for optimisation, i.e. I deal with minimisation problems and their generalisation to the world of so-called ‘monotone operators’ in cases where no exact evaluation of the function or operator to be minimised is available.

For Schoolgirls: Stories and Fun Moments with Our Mathematicians

To mark the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, the Faculty of Mathematics is inviting female students in their final two years of secondary school to a special on-site event. The aim is to provide an authentic insight into studying mathematics and conducting research at university.

To the Event

For Everybody: Exhibition "Women in Science"

From the beginning of February until the end of June, the exhibition Women in Science by Associate Professor Angelika Manhart will be on display in the entrance area of the cafeteria at Kolingasse 14-16. Admission is free, of course!

To the Exhibition

For Female Researchers: E-STEEM Postdoc Call

With E-STEEM, the university created a program to support women in the STEM fields an economics – fields in which women are underrepresented.

At the Faculty of Mathematics, you can apply for a postdoctoral position with one of our 23 hosts: