Renée Schroeder
Renée Schroeder (born May 18, 1953) is an Austrian biochemist and university professor. She works in the Department of Biochemistry at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories, a collaboration between the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna. She was born in João Monlevade, Brazil, where her father was an electrical engineer; her family moved to Europe when she was 14. Her research focuses on biochemistry, especially RNA.
She has held several public roles. From 2001 to 2005, she served on Austria’s Bioethics Commission. From 2005 to 2010, she was Vice-President of the Austrian Science Fund. Since September 2010, she has been a member of the Council for Research and Technology Development. Schroeder has been an outspoken advocate for women in science, earning the UNESCO-L’Oréal Special Honor Award for Women in Science in 2001 and the Vienna Women’s Prize in 2007.
In 2003, she became the second woman to join the Austrian Academy of Sciences’ Division of Mathematics and the Natural Sciences. She resigned in May 2012 to protest the academy’s promotion of excellence and the high presence of Catholic German student fraternities. In September 2022, she was named honorary senator at the University of Vienna for her outstanding commitment to the university and its scientific work.
Her awards also include the Theodor Körner Prize (1984), the Wittgenstein Award (2003), and the Grand Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria (2006).
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 06:31 (CET).