Over the past few months, we have been working intensively on the operational launch of the dataTUdiscovery Service Center, with the goal of supporting researchers in integrating ML and AI methods into their scientific workflows. At the kick-off meeting on May 4, 2026, project participants, researchers, and students gathered for a presentation of the initial progress of TU Wien’s new interdisciplinary Research+AI Service Center and to discuss future activities.

During the setup phase, the focus was on establishing the organizational and technical foundations, including the project website, a shared mailing list, and a structured intake process for new projects. Additionally, dataTUdiscovery was presented to the faculty councils for Informatics, Technical Chemistry, and Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, with presentations to the remaining faculty councils to follow. At the same time, the first research projects were launched on peptide folding, biosensor data, and experimental data collections with the help of the first student projects. 

We successfully filled the project’s two senior scientist positions with Catharina Hollauer and Christian Fellinger from among numerous applicants. Both will begin on July 1, 2026. In addition, the establishment of student support structures has already begun with the creation of the first research assistant position at the Faculty of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. Furthermore, dataTUdiscovery conducted initial networking meetings with AI initiatives as well as discussions with industry partners. With the successful acquisition of the WWTF-DARE project dataTUtransform, we have also taken another step forward within the framework of dataTUdiscovery toward reusable and reproducible ML/AI artifacts.