September 30 – October 3, 2025 – MMBL at CellMech 2025 Conference
Last week wrapped up an incredible CellMech 2025 full of science, ideas, and inspiration! The talks, posters, and discussions were overflowing with creativity and talent, reigniting our purpose and sharpening our research directions. We were thrilled to showcase exciting work by our brilliant postdocs Dunja Alexandra Al-Nuaimi and Sowmya Sunkara on ECM dynamics, mechanics, and energy consumption during early development. Immensely grateful for this vibrant and supportive community — already looking forward to CellMech 2027!
September 29, 2025 – MMBL at AHHSA 2025 Conference
It was a great pleasure to present our recent work on traumatic brain injuries at AHHSA 2025, by invitation from Prof. Kumar Sharma. The meeting was filled with inspiring science and thought-provoking talks that left a deep impact on us and brought even greater relevance to our research. We showcased some fantastic work by our talented postdocs, Sowmya Sunkara, PhD, and Dunja Alexandra Al-Nuaimi, on modeling human neuron injuries in a dish using bioengineered tools to explore the dynamics of diffuse axonal injury (DAI) post-trauma.
September 10, 2025 – MMBL Welcomes Negar Asadi
Negar joined the Abdelfattah Lab as a PhD student in the 2025 CeMM cohort. With a strong foundation in molecular biotechnology and experience spanning academia, biotech start-ups, and the pharmaceutical industry, she brings a unique perspective to the lab. Her work focuses on traumatic cerebral vascular injury and its link to irreversible neuronal damage, using a bioengineered in vitro neurovasculature model combined with advanced microscopy and multi-omics profiling to uncover how the extracellular matrix (ECM), endothelial, and neuronal cells interact during repair.
March 26, 2025 – More is better (3D printers that is)
MMBL gets its 2nd printer – Prusa MK4S 3D printer. This will be our workhorse for all parts and platforms with lower resolution requirements. We love it! And it already sped up many directions in the lab. A special thanks to the Amazing Sabrina Lindinger for assembling this printer from scratch, it took many hours and gummy bears!
February 17, 2025 – MMBL Welcomes Sowmya Sunkara
Sowmya joined the lab as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Her experience in brain biology will be invaluable to explore the mechanics of tissue disorganization and axon guidance. Sowmya will focus her studies on traumatic brain injuries and the role of the extracellular matrix (ECM) in injury evolution. She already developed some cool tools that can locally injure neurons in a dish, and is currently spearheading the growth of neuron from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) in the lab.
January 25, 2025 – MMBL enjoys the Vienna Science Ball
Representing CeMM, MMBL looking sharp at the 2025 Vienna Science Ball. What a way to start the year together with the entire Vienna scientific community.
January 7, 2025 – MMBL Welcomes Dunja Al-Nuaimi
Dunja joined the lab as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Her experience in vascular mechanobiology will be invaluable to explore the mechanics of tissue organization. Dunja will tackle many angles including YAP’s contribution to localized morphogenesis, vascular injury and repair during traumatic brain injuries and establishing a new method to magnetically bioprint and control tissue organization.
December 17, 2024 – Joint Christmas dinner with the de Rooij Lab
Yes we already had our Christmas dinner, but when invited for another, we never say No! Here, we’re enjoying some nice Ramen with neighbors the de Rooij lab!!
December 11, 2024 – We say goodbye to Hanne Toth
After a very productive month, Hanna spearheaded new directions in the lab in this exploratory rotation. She used magnets to build ECM from the ground up, and managed to observe ECM-cell interactions. Hanna also used magnetic particles in ECMs which enabled control over ECM flow when subjected to a magnetic field. Although we are sad Hanna’s time is done with us, she will be continuing her PhD in close proximity to our lab at the de Rooij Lab. We wish her all the best in her future research.
December 6, 2024 – MMBL is 3D printing-ready
Today we kicked off our Form 4B Formlabs biomedical 3D printer. We managed to print super fine structures ~<25 µm. We know these will be very useful for our projects and we can’t wait to see what we will come up with next.
December 4, 2024 – MMBL Christmas dinner
Today we’re enjoying the first MMBL Christmas dinner. We celebrated our first grant together with our amazing Research Technician, Sabrina Lindinger, super rotation Student Hanna Toth and future Postdoc Dunja Al-Nuaimi!!
December 3, 2024 – Traumatoids grant Funded (FWF Austrian Science Fund)
We are super excited to receive funding from the FWF Austrian Science Fund for our “Traumatoids: Modeling traumatic brain injury with organoids” project. In this project we will engineer a high-precision trauma induction device to deliver mechanical insults to brain organoids. This will help us study how local injuries evolve and dynamically change over time the effect of that on tissue dis/organization. We will delve into the molecular underpinnings of such changes, particularly focusing on extracellular matrix dynamics and its involvement in injury progression. With this project we aim to answer the questions when happens when forces are too much to handle in the brain, and aspire to identify avenues to prevent posttraumatic neurodegeneration. More about the grant here.
November 11, 2024 – MMBL Welcomes Hanna Toth
We’re ready to kick-off experiments with Hanna Toth our CeMM PhD Rotation Student for one month. Hanna will work on inducing and controlling ECM flow and organization using magnetic guidance to systematically study how multicellular morphologies emerge under the influence of ECM motion.
September 19, 2024 – MMBL Welcomes Sabrina Lindinger
We are beyond excited to have Sabrina Lindinger on the MMBL team. Sabrina will join the MMBL as a Senior Research Technician. Having gained considerable wet lab experience at the Superti-Furga Lab at CeMM, she is ready to tackle the mechanics of tissue organization. Welcome Sabrina!
August 7, 2024 – MMBL is born
Our story begins on August 7, 2024 in Vienna, Austria. The Multiscale Mechanobiology and Bioengineering Lab is nestled within the excellent scientific environment at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. There we will explore the fundamental laws of tissue organization focusing on epithelial mechanics, extracellular matrix interactions, and dynamic changes in the mechanical environment in health and disease. We will engineer the tools to mechanically stimulate tissues and measure tissue mechanics, bridge multicellular organization to molecular drivers, and model organization dynamics. We use in vitro human pluripotent stem cell-derived model systems, primarily focusing on the questions of central nervous system organization and disorganization during traumatic brain injuries, as well as disease progression during liver fibrosis.
Abdel Fattah Lab 