Helmut Leder is professor holds a chair in Empirical Visual Aesthetics (of General Psychology) at the University of Vienna where in 2004 he founded the research focus in Empirical Aesthetics, in which human aesthetic experiences are studied, regarding a variety of objects, and contexts, from neurophysiological laboratory studies, to field studies in museum and outdoors. He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed papers, more than a dozen funded projects in Empirical Aesthetics, he was the president of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics, and in Vienna is also the Head of the interdisciplinary Cognitive Sciences Research Hub. He was a Founding International Member of the Global Institute of Advanced Studies (GIAS at NYU), in 2018 Fellow at the Italian Academy – of Advanced Studies in America, at Columbia University. In 2020 he received the Arnheim Award of the APA American Psychological Association, Div.10, for Outstanding Achievement in Psychology and the Arts.