Hanwen Zhang joined the Meisner-Kober Group as a PhD student in 2025, and is funded by the FWF REVELATION Doctoral Program, which focuses on AI-supported innovation in biomedical imaging.

Hanwen Zhang is a PhD candidate at the LBI-NVPM within the FWF funded REVELATION Doctoral Program, focusing on AI-supported innovation in biomedical imaging. Her research centers on developing AI-enabled quantitative imaging approaches to investigate the uptake, biodistribution, and endosomal escape of extracellular vesicles (EVs). By combining biomedical research with computer science expertise, this interdisciplinary project aims to establish advanced imaging assays for the quantitative analysis of EV trafficking and support the development of EV-based therapeutic RNA delivery strategies ultimately. Her research is co-supervised by Melanie Schürz, the leader of Program Line of Nanovesicular Technologies at LBI-NVPM, which focuses on extracellular vesicle trafficking, and Andreas Uhl, the head of Multimedia Signal Processing research group in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Salzburg.

She completed her Master’s degree in Translational Physiology and Pharmacology at the Karolinska Institute in 2025, where her research focused on the effects of human serum-derived extracellular vesicles on postoperative cognitive decline (POCD). Prior to this, she obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Pharmacology and Biochemistry through a joint program between China Pharmaceutical University and the University of Strathclyde, UK.

Supervisors:Univ. Prof. Dr. Nicole Meisner-Kober, Dr. Melanie Schürz, Univ. Prof. Dr. Andreas Uhl