(Vienna, 27 March 2018) The Senate has appointed Andrea Barta, research group leader at Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) of the Medical University of Vienna and the University of Vienna onto the University Council of the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna.
The new University Council of Vetmeduni Vienna met for its first inaugural meeting on the campus on 16 March 2018, thereby starting its five-year term of office.
The other members of the University Council are Johannes Khinast (Chairman), Catherine Trattner, Felix Althaus and Andreas Buchner. Andrea Barta will act as Deputy Chairman.
Andrea Barta is a professor at the Medical University of Vienna and has led a research group at MFPL since 2005. Her research group works in the field of RNA biology and concentrates on the mechanism of alternative mRNA splicing. This important and highly regulated process enables a single gene to encode several different proteins. Mutations that can affect alternative splicing in humans are one of the main causes of many diseases, especially cancer.
As director of a focused PhD programme in RNA, Andrea Barta has played an important role in establishing Vienna as an international centre for RNA research. She is a founding member and long-serving spokesperson for the scientific communication platform "OPEN Science", which operates the Vienna OPEN Lab at Vienna Biocenter.
About Andrea Barta
Andrea Barta graduated in biochemistry from the University of Vienna. In 1981, following a research placement at the Medical School of the University of California in San Francisco, USA, she took up a post first as assistant and then as extraordinary professor at the Institute of Biochemistry of the Medical Faculty, University of Vienna (which then became the Medical University of Vienna in 2004). Since 2005 she has led a research group at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) of MedUni Vienna and the University of Vienna. She is an elected member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organisation). Barta was awarded the Grand Decoration in Gold by the City of Vienna in 2016.