Associate Professor Talin Barisani-Asenbauer, an international top researcher in the field of inflammatory eye diseases, helps improve the prognosis for people in less developed countries

“People in less developed countries have a right to be healthy, too, but not enough is being done for them”, says Talin Barisani-Asenbauer. As an ophthalmologist she devotes herself to researching eye diseases that take away the eyesight of millions of people in the poor regions of the world. It is because of her descent that she can see further than the end of her nose: the Viennese with Armenian roots graduated from Vienna’s Lycée Français and is married to an Austrian of Italian origin. With regard to her professional career, too, Talin Barisani-Asenbauer seems to be at home everywhere in the world: even when she was a student, she spent a summer semester in the USA attending courses in English Literature and Ethical Medicine before she began her medical studies. She finished her training as a medical consultant at the University of Vienna.

Even during her training with a clinical focus on ocular inflammation and infection, Barisani-Asenbauer was put in charge of the Uveitis Outpatient Clinic at the Vienna University Clinic’s Department of Ophthalmology in 1994. Uveitis is a chronically recurring eye inflammation caused by various autoimmune diseases and infections. The patients come to the outpatient clinic with symptoms of inflammation. The first step is to establish the underlying disease from a great number of possible causes. A highly complex specialist field, ranging from oncology to rheumatology right through to pediatrics, Talin Barisani-Asenbauer explains. “I have found my place in an area of ophthalmology that is both moving and challenging: treating the chronically ill.”

Besides her work in the outpatient clinic, the versatile basic researcher takes part in numerous international research cooperations on the topics of ocular inflammation and infection. In addition, Talin Barisani-Asenbauer will engage in comparative research on transnational eye diseases – such as ocular manifestations in cases of tuberculosis, malaria and malnutrition, for example – as part of the “Geographic Medicine” platform that is to be created at the medical university with Prof. Ursula Wiedermann-Schmidt as head. Gender research in ophthalmology is another clinical focus of Barisani-Asenbauer. Giving her first lecture successfully as a young researcher many years ago in the USA was a key moment in her career which pointed the way. As did the years 1997 and 1999: in cooperation with Prof. Werner Lubitz, Barisani-Asenbauer established molecular genetic analysis techniques in ophthalmology by means of which several bacterial pathogens can be detected using a single laboratory sample. While the method was controversial back then, it is used as a matter of routine in indicated cases today.

Current highlights in Talin Barisani-Asenbauer’s career include having been appointed Secretary-General of the IOIS (International Ocular Inflammation Society) in 2007. Since then, the ophthalmologist’s networks have expanded considerably, and she actively contributes to establishing the framework conditions of her scientific field. Another highlight in her research career is to have been put in charge of the Laura Bassi Centre of Expertise OCUVAC. Over the years, Talin Barisani-Asenbauer has become a dedicated women’s networker. She was sceptical about such cooperation in the beginning, but she changed her mind after having attended a one-year coaching programme run by fFORTE: “I met so many highly competent women who had overcome incredible obstacles just to be able to do research. Because, unfortunately, the requirements of a career in medicine still conform with male career models.”

Back then, Talin Barisani-Asenbauer realised that the access barriers for female researchers were similar everywhere. Women with children had particularly serious obstacles to overcome: “Scientific research demands that you do research partly in your spare time, outside of an 8-hour working day. But in Austria women are still the ones who are chiefly responsible for raising children.” A mother of three herself, she can count on her family’s support, and her superiors always made flexible working hours possible. With key qualities like persistence and determination, a growing number of female researchers are successful like her these days. However, especially female doctors find it hard to reconcile their work at the hospital, teaching and research with the demands of private life, Talin Barisani-Asenbauer summarises. “In many cases, female researchers fight for what fascinates them. They must be highly motivated and outstandingly competent to overcome male-dominated access barriers in scientific research.”

Portrait: Teresa Arrieta