The Wittgenstein Award is Austria's highest endowed science award, honoring outstanding achievements in research. As part of the awards presented along the "Austrian Nobel Prize", the START Award, endowed with 1.2 million euros, is presented to top junior researchers in all disciplines. An international jury (including two Nobel Prize winners) selects the award winners, enabling researchers to drive their research more independently and for a longer term. Six outstanding junior researchers were selected, including JKU physicist Moritz Brehm from the JKU’s Institute of Semiconductor and Solid State Physics. Brehm’s research focuses on problems when using new, light-based approaches to transfer of information to silicon chips.

Moritz Brehm remarked: "Naturally I am thrilled because awards like this don’t come along every day, especially awards presented by such a high-profile jury. I am now in a position to add more people to my research group and focus more strongly on my area of research. I first learned about scientific excellence at the Institute of Semiconductors and Solid State Physics under Prof. Günther Bauer and now under Prof. Armando Rastelli. Now I have an opportunity to pass on everything I have learned and I am very much looking forward to this."