Governing Board of the University of Göttingen (Vice-Chair) ERC Scientific Council (President, 2010-2013) Scientific Advisory Board of the University of Vienna (Chair, current) Helga Nowotny (born 1937[1]) is Professor emeritus of Social Studies of Science, ETH Zurich.

In interviews, she has recalled first wanting to become a scientist at the age of 8, when she was sent to Vorarlberg, the westernmost province of Austria, and quickly learned the local dialect.

After completing her degree, she faced opposition to her application for an assistant professorship in the Department of Criminology there on the basis of her being a woman.

[5] Nowotny's work in the 1970s and 1980s includes topics such as scientific controversies and technological risks, social time, coping with uncertainty, self-organization in science and gender relations in science, resulting in major monographs, co-edited and edited books and numerous articles.

In 1989, she published the book Eigenzeit (English title: Time: The Modern and Postmodern Experience), which has since been translated into several languages.

She has been chair and member of the scientific advisory boards of numerous research institutions and policy-related committees throughout Europe.

[citation needed] In 2020, she was appointed by European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth Mariya Gabriel to chair an independent search committee for the next president of the ERC.

Before moving to ETH Zurich, she was Professor and Head of the newly founded Institute for Theory and Social Studies of Science of the University of Vienna.

[6] Nowotny has held teaching and research positions at the Institute of Advanced Study in Vienna, King's College, Cambridge, UK, the University of Bielefeld, the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.