Christa Neuper

A woman heading the university

„Those who want to perform at their best at work need to be able to relax in their private lives. I therefore consider it the responsibility of the University of Graz to provide its members with the best possible support in balancing their professional and family responsibilities. “

Christa Neuper, born in Graz in 1958, began studying psychology at the University of Graz in 1976, graduating with a doctorate in 1984. Thanks to her interdisciplinary approach and openness to technical and medical issues, she succeeded in building bridges between the disciplines. After taking a break to raise her family, she worked at the Institute for Electrical and Biomedical Engineering at Graz University of Technology and as a research assistant at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Medical Informatics and Neuroinformatics. During this time, Neuper worked with her colleagues to develop an EEG-based brain-computer interface – an interface that translates cognitive processes into special computer functions, enabling users to control prostheses, wheelchairs or robots, for example.

In 2002, she qualified as a professor of psychology, and in 2005 she was appointed Professor of Applied Neuropsychology: Human-Computer Interface at the University of Graz. The research platform Initiative Gehirnforschung Steiermark INGE-St (Styrian Brain Research Initiative) was also founded in the same year, with Neuper serving as its chair until 2011. From 2006 to 2011, the brain researcher headed the Institute for Semantic Data Analysis at the Faculty of Computer Science at Graz University of Technology. In 2007, she became a university professor of neuropsychology at the University of Graz, where she headed the Institute of Psychology from 2009 to 2011.

On 1 October 2011, Neuper was elected Rector, becoming the first woman to head the University of Graz. In this role, which she pursued for eight years, until 2019, she was particularly keen to strengthen cutting-edge research in Graz in cooperation with other universities in the region, raise its international profile, and further promote the global networking of the University of Graz. In addition, Ms. Neuper is committed to promoting the compatibility of family and career within the university system and the work-life balance of employees, for which she was named “Austrian of the Year 2014” in the “Family and Career” category by the daily newspaper Die Presse. In 2017, Neuper received the Grand Josef Krainer Prize for her achievements, in 2019 the Ring of Honour of the City of Graz, and in the same year both the Grand Decoration of Honour in Gold for Services to the Republic of Austria and the Grand Decoration of Honour in Gold of the Province of Styria.