Ulrike Attenberger took up the Professorship of Radiology (§98) at the Medical University of Vienna on July 15, 2024. At the same time, she took over as Head of the Clinical Division of General and Paediatric Radiology at the Department of Biomedical Imaging and Image-guided Therapy.
In her role as Professor and Head of the Division, Ulrike Attenberger wants to “create a beacon for digital health”. This includes the use of digitalisation and artificial intelligence for an optimised patient journey and addressing the challenges of demographic change, such as the shortage of specialists. State-of-the-art technologies must be used to ensure access to care for a quality-assured healthcare system in the future. In addition, high-precision diagnostics are needed as the basis for individualized, stage-adapted therapy in the sense of precision medicine.
Transfer from Bonn University Hospital to Medical University of Vienna
Ulrike Attenberger grew up in Freising and Eichstätt and studied human medicine at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich after completing her A-levels. In 2006, she completed her doctorate on the subject of “The significance of MRI in the diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension”. Five years later, she habilitated in radiology at the Mannheim Medical Faculty of Heidelberg University, making her the youngest habilitation candidate of the German Radiological Society. In 2019, she became Chair and Director of the Clinic for Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology at Bonn University Hospital. She held this position until she moved to the Medical University of Vienna.
Ulrike Attenberger is regarded as a “thought leader” for digitalisation and AI in the healthcare sector: Until her departure from Bonn, she initiated and managed the “Innovative Secure Medical Campus” project, which was funded with 17.5 million euros by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (MWIDE) and established itself as the KI.NRW flagship. Ulrike Attenberger has completed research stays in Zurich, Vienna and at Harvard University, among other places, and was awarded the Fellow Award of the Radiological Society of North America in 2010 and the Walter Friedrich Prize in 2012. In 2016, she received the emotion award for women in leadership.
On the scientific advisory board of the German. Bundesärztekammer (German Medical Association), she heads the “AI in Medicine” working group and supports the German Research Foundation (DFG) with her expertise as a review board member.
