In Austria - as well as in some other European countries - the “Habilitation” is the country’s highest-ranking university examination in which applicants undergo an academic evaluation of their special qualifications to independently conduct scientific/academic research and teach the entire range of their subject area [facultas docendi]. As a pre-requisite for the academic examination procedure and to earn the [venia legendi] teaching authorization and qualification in a specified subject area, the “Habilitation” candidate is required to initiate and develop outstanding academic/scientific and didactic qualifications.

About the Faculty Members
Prof. Mag. Dr. Barbara Herzog-Punzenberger (Linz School of Education) studied cultural and social anthropology at the University of Vienna, earning her doctorate in sociology in 2013 at the Freiburg University of Education. She has authored over 80 academic publications about educational inequality, migration, and multilingualism and has acquired – as well as collaborated on - approximately two dozen externally funded research projects.

DI Dr. Heiko Groiß (Christian Doppler Laboratory for Nanoscale Phase Transformations, Center for Surface and Nanoanalytics - ZONA) studied Technical Physics at the JKU as well as at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He has been in charge of electron microscopy at ZONA since 2014 and has managed the highly endowed Christian Doppler Laboratory for Nanoscale Phase Transformations since 2019.

DI Markus Sinnl, PhD, studied computer science at the TU in Vienna, earning his PhD in statistics and operations research in 2015 at the University of Vienna. He earned his habilitation in 2021 with his dissertation titled "On the Design of Solution Algorithms for Hard Optimization Problems: A Journey through Mixed-Integer Programming" and has over 40 peer-reviewed papers as well as several grants and awards to his name thus far in his academic career. He currently conducts research at the Institute of Production and Logistics Management.