Prof. Dr. Peter A. Bruck PhD, MA

Honorary President of the ICNM |  Chairperson of Board of Directors of WSA-World Summit Awards | Founder and former CEO , Research Studios Austria FG |  Co-Founder and former Managing Director, Data Intelligence Initiative Austria.

 

Peter A. Bruck is an entrepreneurial scholar with a strong interest in media and tech systems and social transformation and justice. As an entrepreneur he has founded and created 4 research companies in applied Information and Communication Technologies and smart digital solutions and two start-ups in the eduTech space. His research work is focused on translational effectiveness between universities and markets with a particular interest in the interaction between cultures and technologies. He founded several research centers in universities in Canada and Austria and directed research programs all directed towards making academic work more relevant and impactful for advancing social justice, democratic participation and cultural sovereignty.

 

Bruck is particularly interested in understanding what creative people can do innovatively for the social good with technologies and how media shape minds and social practices. He studied law, economics, sociology, and communications at the universities of Vienna, Iowa and McGill and holds doctorates in law and communications.

 

Bruck is a enthusiastic university teacher and has taught at universities in Canada, the US and Western Europe plus Israel and Poland holding chairs in communication theory, mass communication sociology, media economics and new media technology.

 

He has nearly 40 years’ experience in founding and managing academic and business-oriented research centers and IT companies. He created the University of Applied Sciences in Salzburg and its first programs with focus on information economy and multimedia. He has acted as business consultant and policy advisor in digital technologies in Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Poland, Portugal, the US and Canada.

 

His rich experience includes working as the Chief Content Officer as part of the Board of management of the Telekom Austria Group where is also lead the business unit on Interactive Media. He founded and managed for 20 years as CEO and Chief Researcher the Research Studios Austria FG, bringing digital innovations from universities into markets. He successfully started up several companies in the research and educational tech space and effectively concluded M&A deals.

 

Peter A. Bruck founded the World Summit Awards as Austrian Member State’s initiative for the UN World Summit on Information Society in 2003, with a current reach in and participation from 187 countries from around the global. This work built upon the success of the Austrian State Prize in MuliMediArt and the EU’s EUROPRIX MultiMediaArt from 1998- 2005

 

In 2024/25, his main interest focuses on purpose driven global digital innovation and social impact ventures, the development of DataSpaces for sustainability and mitigating the climate crisis and the future of Digital Democracy.