January 2026: Starting off the new year with delicious Vietnamese food, we wish everyone a wonderfully productive & exciting 2026!

December 2025: We had a great time at the annual CeMM Christmas party, this year at the Schönbrunn Orangery and co-organized by our lab’s very own Hanna. Happy holidays to everyone!!

November 2025: Hanna presented her exciting project on senescence heterogeneity of the endothelium at the 2025 SENESCEL meeting in Barcelona, with a poster as well as an oral presentation!

September 2025: Laura attended and presented at the 12th Cardiovascular Research Days & 12th International Meeting on Ageing in Halle, Germany

September 2025: We happily welcome Thaddaeus Newerkla & Negar Asadi to the lab, who are both part of the 2025 CeMM PhD cohort!

September 2025: Lisa won the Best Short Talk Award at the FEBS “Immunology, metabolism and ageing” meeting in Matrei am Brenner, Austria. Congratulations!

August 2025: Congratulations to Natalie for giving an excellent presentation at the VBC Summer School Symposium!

July 2025: We welcome Natalie Kochova to the lab! She will be spending 2 months with us as part of the Vienna BioCenter Summer School program.

June 2025: We happily welcome Vera Belyaeva, our brand new research technician!

June 2025: Busy week for the lab! With oral & poster presentations at the 2025 EVBO Summer School in Helsinki (Clara, Sarah & Rita), and talks at the very first AIMS 2025 meeting on “Modeling Aging in Microphysiological Systems”, as well as the 2025 MPS World Summit in Brussels (Laura). Very exciting to be sharing our results with the vascular biology & MPS communities!

June 2025: New funding by ERA-NET/TRANSCAN-3, on our project called “HAVOC”! An exciting joint effort with the labs of Stefan Krauss (Norway) and Peter Loskill (Germany), in which we will be combining tumor endothelial cells, breast cancer organoids, novel bispecific antibodies, and organ-on-chip systems. https://transcan.eu/output-results/funded-projects/havoc.kl

If it sits, it fits! Proof that (almost) all of us can pack into our tissue culture room..who knew culturing cells could be so cozy? 🧑‍🔬👩‍🔬🔬🤸‍♂️📦

To show our love for blood vessel research, we acted out Murray’s law (i.e., the cube of the radius (D) of a parent vessel equals the sum of the cubes of the radii of its daughter vessels) on the biggest, branchiest old tree we could find in Vienna’s beautiful Türkenschanzpark. This effort was part of CeMM’s 2024 research report, make sure to check it out! https://cemm.at/media/downloads/annual-research-reports

Photocredit: Klaus Pichler

Jan 2025: 💃 Looking our best at the 10th Vienna Ball of Sciences! 🕺

Dec 2024: Happy holidays from the Abdel Fattah & de Rooij labs!!

Nov 2024: Warming up with Georgian food after shooting our picture for the upcoming CeMM Research report (to be revealed in 2025…)

Oct 2024: We happily welcome Katja Sommer, who is joining the lab for her 1-month rotation project as part of the CeMM PhD program 🎓

Oct 2024: We unleashed our “inner Monsters” (Inc) for the annual Halloween Party! Creative credits to Fanni & Clara for awesome hand-made costumes!

Sep 2024: Clara presented her work on single-cell level dissection of the hepatic endothelium at the Single Cell Genomics conference in beautiful Corinthia (Greece)


July 2024: Our lab’s entry into the Science in Shorts contest was picked among the 10 winners of 2024! With “A vessel in time” we explain our research into endothelial cell heterogeneity and its role in aging, with nothing more than a camera and a juicy collection of different fruits. For all winning videos, check: https://www.nature.com/immersive/scienceinshorts/watch/index.html

July 2024: A huge congrats to Sarah Dobner for receiving the OeAW DOC fellowship!! https://stipendien.oeaw.ac.at/en/stipendien/doc/doc-gefoerderte-personen

May 2024: We warmly welcome Rita Faria to the group, who will be starting her postdoc with us!

April 2024: New funding by FWF, on our project on circulating endothelial cells in vascular aging: https://www.fwf.ac.at/en/research-radar/10.55776/P37301

February 2024: We welcome Clara Mertel to the group! Clara will be writing her Master thesis with us, exploring the vascular niche in chronic liver disease using a combination of single-cell omics, machine learning, and in vitro techniques.

February 2024: First review paper of the lab has been published! Read all about what single-cell omics has taught us so far about endothelial cell heterogeneity during aging: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10456-023-09904-6

December 2023: Christmas lab lunch before taking off for the holidays!

October 2023: Joint Maier-de Rooij lab retreat – We had lots of fun discussing potential shared projects & fixing the time travelers “world clock” in an escape room.

September 2023: New funding from the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft our project entitled “Disease-Driving Mechanisms in Patients with Portal Hypertension” (in short “MOTION”), led by Thomas Reiberger and his clinical team. We are excited to be venturing into the world of vascular rewiring in chronic liver disease!

Qelcome