Käthe Böhm Fellowship
The Käthe Böhm Fellowship at TU Wien is a targeted funding instrument aimed at supporting female tenure-track researchers in the early stages of their academic careers, with the goal of increasing the proportion of women in professorial positions and strengthening academic career development. Selection is based on scientific excellence, career potential, and a structured proposal outlining the intended use of funds and career objectives.
Georgia Avarikioti, Assistant Professor at the Research Unit Security and Privacy, TU Wien Informatics, and head of the TU Wien Blockchain Hub, has been awarded the Käthe Böhm Fellowship in recognition of her outstanding scientific achievements and her exceptional potential to establish an independent research profile. Her research focuses on the foundations of secure and scalable blockchain systems, covering payment channels, cross-chain protocols, light clients, and consensus mechanisms. A key contribution of her work is the development of compositional game-theoretic frameworks for blockchain protocols, enabling rigorous analysis of economically rational adversaries and strengthening security guarantees in Layer 2 systems.
She has also contributed to the design of interoperable blockchain infrastructures, including constant-storage light clients, secure bridge constructions, and proof systems for cross-chain verification. Most notably, she co-developed BitVM, a breakthrough approach enabling trustless smart contract execution on Bitcoin, which was awarded the Bitcoin Research Prize in 2025.
Her research has been published at leading venues such as USENIX Security, ACM CCS, NDSS, CSF, and Financial Cryptography, and underpins major research initiatives including FWF ESPRIT and WWTF SCALE2. Beyond academia, her work has influenced industry practice and open-source development.
Zeta Avarikioti is an active member of the international research community, serving on program committees of top conferences and as Program Chair of Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025). In 2025, she was also awarded the Hedy Lamarr Prize by the City of Vienna for her contributions to information technology.
