A new Geometry for Einstein’s Theory of Relativity & Beyond

Privacy and Data Protection Policy

1. In the public area of this website (i.e. all the links of the form https://ef-geometry.univie.ac.at/… except those requiring a login) we only use cookies provided by the Vienna University Computer Center (ZID) of the University of Vienna. The ZID uses only so-called “session cookies” (also known as “temporary cookies”), i.e. cookies that are only temporarily stored for the duration of your use of one of our internet pages. The following cookies can be set by the ZID:

  • session cookies (ID),
  • TYPO3 session cookies,
  • JavaScript cookies,
  • Matomo/Piwik cookies for statistical analysis.

None of this anonymously collected usage data will be merged with your personal data and all the cookies information will be deleted immediately after the end of the statistical analysis. After the session has ended (as soon as you end your browser session), all cookies will be deleted or invalidated for every further use.

Since our site is hosted on servers of the ZID, we cannot decide to opt-out from some of the aforementioned cookies, and we refer to the ZID’s website for contact details in case you need further information about these cookies.

2. In addition to the aforementioned cookies, the current website uses additional cookies (and similar technologies) for the following purposes:

  • save user preferences (light/dark mode, accessibility options) across multiple sessions on the sub-domain ef-geometry.univie.ac.at. This is done either using cookies, or modern technologies like HTML5 Web Storage APIs (so-called “localStorage”);
  • enable access to the administration area for authorized users; the corresponding cookies are valid only for the current login session of the user, and invalidated after logout; they are only used to grant access to protected resources on our website and not for tracking purposes. After logout, the only information that may remain saved either on the server or in the database (see point 3. below) are: the timestamp of the last login, the pages modified (and the corresponding changes), and similar types of information.

Our databases are custom instances of WordPress and/or MySQL, and they are hosted on servers run by the ZID. In these databases we may save the following personal information:

  • name, family name (and possibly title of study),
  • personal or professional website (if available)

and the same information may be partially also publicly available on some pages of our website. Both saving the aforementioned personal information and publishing them on our website is used for reporting our scientific activities both to our funding provider (Austrian Science Fund – FWF) and to the general public. Your personal details may be saved and/or published on our website and databases in the following cases:

  • if you are a member of the project (principal investigator or employee), or an external collaborator;
  • if you are a co-author of a paper written in the framework of the project;
  • if you participated in scientific events that we organized (your personal information will be posted online only if you explicitly authorized this during the registration to a scientific event – participants are always entitled to have their personal information updated or removed from the corresponding page upon request – see point 3. below for contact details).

In addition, we may save email addresses in the following cases:

  • if you are a member of the project (principal investigator or employee) – in this case your email address (preferably an institutional email address) may be listed on the website of the project;
  • subscribers to our newsletter: in this case also a private email addresses provided by the subscribers can be used, but they will not be listed publicly on our website. Subscribers to newsletter can always ask to be removed from the newsletter at any time. Further information about the newsletter are available at this page.

4. Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from another website behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website. Each time that we embed a content of that type we will provide a disclaimer about the potential tracking, as well as a way to opt-out from that tracking if technically possible.

5. The current temporary Data Protection Officer for all the personal data listed above is Matteo Tommasini (University of Vienna, matteo.tommasini@univie.ac.at). You may submit any request of update, rectification and deletion of your personal data to the aforementioned person.

If you provide us your personal data while applying for an open position in our project, you will be informed during the online application about the precise treatment of your personal information (in particular, who is responsible for the treatment of your data, with which people your data will be shared, and how long your personal data will be retained).

For the following purposes:

  • send the aforementioned newsletter to all the subscribers,
  • access application documents submitted by applicants to the project

access to the databases is given to the 5 project leaders of the project:

6. For all points that are not explicitly mentioned above, we refer to the Data Protection Declaration of the University of Vienna in accordance to the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR / DSGVO), available at the following links: English version – German version.

In case you have any complaints with the managing of your personal data by our Data Protection Officer, you can contact the the Data Protection Officers of the entire University of Vienna at the email address dsba@univie.ac.at. In addition, in accordance with article 77 of the GDPR, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the responsible Austrian supervisory authority:

Data Protection Authority
Barichgasse 40-42, 1030 Vienna
Telephone: +43 1 52 152-0
email: dsb@dsb.gv.at
website: dsb.gv.at