RISE Christmas Party 2025 – The RISE family celebrates together!

Our Christmas party has become something of a cult event. Always a “RISE inside, RISE insight” affair, just among ourselves: hundreds of colleagues came together to look back on a successful year and share special moments with each other.

This time, we had a sad reason to focus our program on our roots in technical sciences. The “grandfather” of RISE, His Excellency Univ. Prof. Dr. Peter Skalicky, a great physicist, rector of TU Wien for 20 years, a very important Austrian and a brilliant research promoter, who, for example, personally contributed significantly to the retention of two Nobel Prize winners at TU Wien: 2022, Anton Zeilinger; 2023, Ferenz Kraus. We know this from a very personal conversation.

With Peter's passing, RISE loses its advisory board chairman, our founder loses a very personal mentor, and many at RISE lose a strong ally with a great sense of humor who played a key role in the creation of the TISS at TU Wien. The title “Grandfather of RISE” came from him himself, quote: “I'm obviously not the father, so I guess that makes me the grandfather.”

The celebration was entirely in keeping with this great man's philosophy of “thinking and then acting” based on the guiding principle of “intellectual integrity.” Peter lived by this principle throughout his life.

We commemorated Peter with a moving eulogy by Gerald Steger, a member of our advisory board. We all learned from Peter that truth creates many enemies, but that cultivating it makes us strong as a community.

As always, it was an evening full of highlights, insights, and culinary delights: Oversize foosball table, Carrera racetrack, and curling provided sporting duels and lots of fun, while our DJ got the party started and the photo booth captured unforgettable moments. As usual, the catering was exceptionally good: a rich buffet, a wide variety of drinks, and cocktails until late into the night. Thanks to the barflies at RISE.

Those who achieve a lot are also allowed to celebrate hard.

A special highlight in honor of Peter's life's work was the presentations by our RISE research groups (INSO), which provided in-depth insights into their scientific focus areas, this time ranging from software engineering (BUSY) and legacy systems (MISO) to usability & UX design (DECO), eHealth (COPA), and world-class IT security (ESSE). It is impressive to see the expertise and innovative strength of our teams!

We bid farewell to a great colleague, Reinhold A. Mainz, as he entered his well-deserved retirement. Life begins not at 66, but at 77.

Thank you all!

Days and events like these show that RISE is more than just a company - we are a community, a group of enthusiasts, an alliance dedicated to protecting the digital integrity of individuals, who think, research, develop, celebrate, and support each other.