1.    Tell me in 5 words who is André Rendeiro?
Data wizard / Romantic / European / Creative / Yes we can.

2.    What made you join CeMM?
I have to admit that while I had been in Vienna prior to joining CeMM I had not heard about it, perhaps because I was not studying biomedicine but developmental biology. I decided to apply though because Vienna completely stole my heart and I’m that kind of foolish romantic.
However, when I visited CeMM for the interview I was completely aghast with the reception, the detail and care the admin staff put on arranging our travel and stay – I had never been treated that way before and it produced quite an impression. The interview process itself was though, but it was darn exciting to be part of an event with so many smart people around me. The friendly interactions and horizontal hierarchy that I rightly felt during those days were also a deciding factor (and alright, the terrace views as well). I was hooked. I had to join, and I was fortunate enough to have been selected.

3.    What is it about science that interests you the most?
The challenge of doing something which no one has achieved before, the pursuit of discovery, and the possibility to do something which ultimately helps humanity.​​​​​​​

4.    What is the best career advise you ever received, or you can give to the CeMM community?
Don’t be afraid to ignore an advice. Trust yourself, but ask for help.​​​​​​​

5.    Tell us what happened to you after you left CeMM?
I moved to New York city in March 2020 - one week before travel was banned from Europe and in the middle of still a largely invisible pandemic. I had one week to set up everything at work and home with the precious help of my wife before lockdown hit. Working at Weill Cornell Medicine, which runs one of the largest hospitals in New York city, freshly arrived I quickly became involved in research on COVID-19. I am also still largely working from home since the first day I started, so it has been a completely different experience than I expected coming here. Fortunately, things are gradually improving and I am very lucky to have here friends and fellow CeMM alumni Rico, Julia and Alex (with Mate just arriving) – (New York continues to be amazing). Looking back, it has been really fortunate how everything turned out since I left CeMM. I am now mostly looking forward to the birth of my child in a few months.​​​​​​​

6.    What book do you have on your night table at the moment?
“Utopia for Realists” by Rutger Bregman.
An interesting book on how to build a better society with utopian goals that are actually… practically achievable. (Still reading though)​​​​​​​

7.    What is the last song you heard?
“Vers la Flamme” (Toward the flame), Scriabin.
A poem on the piano about everything in the universe.​​​​​​​

8.    Any message you would like to give to the CeMMies or a former colleague?​​​​​​​
Christian Schmidl, one day I will position those nucleosomes!

André started at CeMM in 2014 in the lab of Christoph Bock where he developed methods for high-throughput cellular profiling and perturbation, applying them to leukemia. He is currently a postdoctoral associate at the Institute for Precision Medicine and Institute for Computational Biomedicine at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, USA. He develops computational methods for the analysis of highly-multiplexed imaging that incorporate expression, morphology, micro-anatomy, and clinical covariates. He led the first tissue-level, single-cell resolution maps of lung pathology during COVID-19, and now focuses on studying lung development, chronic disease, and cancer using deep learning.