The award ceremony for the 2025 Houska Prize was held on 9 April 2025 and MATRIS members participated in this prestigious event as a result of the project ‘Combinatorial Security Testing’ (CST) being nominated in the category ‘Non-University Research’.
Represented by Dimitris Simos (CST Project Lead), Bernhard Garn and Manuel Leithner, as well as by Markus Klemen (Managing Director of SBA Research), MATRIS research in combinatorial security testing was prominently presented to the attendees during the ceremony.
Combinatorial Security Testing offers an innovative combination of mathematical guarantees and effective identification of vulnerabilities. It allows testers, developers and scientists to rapidly find and fix flaws in security- and safety-relevant applications. For its practical relevance and achievements in transferring these results of innovative applications of discrete mathematics to real-world security testing benefitting Austrian companies, the CST project as finalist for the 2025 Houska Prize in the category ‘Non-University Research’ was awarded a prize of 10,000 Euro.
In 2025, the Houska Prize celebrated its 20th round, proudly sponsored by the B&C Private Foundation. The Houska Prize recognizes and promotes business-related research and innovation. B&C’s goal with the Houska Prize is to strengthen the business location Austria as well as to appreciate outstanding research work. The Houska Prize is unique in its kind and in 2025 a total endowment of EUR 760,000 was awarded between the winners as well as nominees in the categories University Research, Non-University Research and Research & Development in SMEs, as well as for the Mariella Schurz Prize.