Master Student in Microfluidics (m/f/d)

We are recruiting an ambitious master thesis student who wants to pursue groundbreaking research in the areas of bioengineering . It will be based in the laboratory of Abdel Rahman Abdel Fattah at CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.

The Project

The function, and dysfunction, of the neurovascular unit (NVU) barrier is central to post-traumatic injury progression. This project introduces a bioengineered microphysiological platform designed to integrate a structured neuronal compartment with a functional vascular barrier in a controlled three-dimensional environment. By engineering spatial organization and vascular perfusion from the outset, we aim to establish an in vitro NVU model in which barrier formation, maintenance, and breakdown can be systematically studied.

To achieve this, we will iteratively design and fabricate microfluidic platforms using CAD-based modeling and in-house 3D printing to generate molds for device production. We will optimize biomaterial composition and mechanical properties to support neuronal compartment stability, vascular maturation, and self-organized interface formation between neural and endothelial components. Functional validation will include quantitative assessment of barrier integrity and permeability, as well as analysis of neurovascular responses using live imaging and molecular profiling. Ultimately, this work will generate a controllable human NVU platform suitable for studying injury dynamics, vascular dysfunction, and tissue remodeling, with implications for mechanistic neuroscience, disease modeling, and therapeutic development.

Your Profile

We are seeking a motivated and talented Master’s student with a strong background in bioengineering, cell biology, biomedical engineering, or a related field. Experience in mammalian cell culture is essential, and familiarity with hydrogel systems, extracellular matrices, microfabrication, microscopy, or computational design is highly desirable. The student will work closely with a postdoctoral researcher in a highly collaborative environment and gain hands-on experience in microphysiological system design, biofabrication, and functional validation of engineered tissues.

The project requires a commitment of 9-12 months and offers the opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge interdisciplinary research at the interface of engineering and neuroscience, with strong potential for co-authorship in a high-impact publication.

The Abdel Fattah Lab 

We are a multidisciplinary group studying tissue organization at the . We exist at the interface of engineering and biology and we are driven by the question: how do cells use the extracellular matrix and mechanical forces to collectively coordinate, initiate, and maintain tissue organization, and what happens when forces are too much to handle? We particularly focus on how local mechanical conditions instruct tissue organization through global morphological and cell state changes, but also tissue disorganization in conditions such as liver fibrosis and traumatic brain injuries. We take three approaches to address this (1) we engineer our own platforms to mechanically stimulate and measure local and emerging mechanical properties in tissues, (2) we explore mechanobiology across the scales in-vitro, going from multicellular events to molecular drivers, in order to characterize and study the dynamic relationship between cells and their extracellular matrix (ECM) microenvironment, (3) we develop computational models to explore the physical laws and logic used by cells to organize, in our effort to establish the mechanical roadmap to tissue organization. In our quest to answer these questions we use magnetic and fluid/solid mechanics engineering principles to build tools that allow us to locally mechanically stimulate cells, deliver traumatic injuries as well as measure local mechanics. Next we focus on quantifying multicellular dynamic cell-ECM interactions using a combination of time-lapse microscopy, high content image analysis, and neighborhood analyses. We explore the driving molecular programs that drive these interactions by combining transcriptomics with mechanical data in mechano-transcriptomics maps. Finally, we describe the organization strategies employed by cells from a mechanical standpoint through computational models using positional information, cellular automata and reaction diffusion models. Our main research topics include central nervous system health, traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries, and liver fibrosis. We utilize several in-vitro model systems, with a primary focus on those deri