Tessa Vergroesen is a PhD student at the Institute of Biology Leiden. In the Mathematical Biology group she is working on the experimental side of the research projects on angiogenesis, investigating effects of modifications of the extracellular matrix on in vitro and in vivo structures of new blood vessel networks.

More information about Tessa Vergroesen

Research

Tessa Vergroesen is a PhD student at the Institute of Biology Leiden. In the Mathematical Biology group she is working on the experimental side of the research projects on angiogenesis, investigating effects of modifications of the extracellular matrix on in vitro and in vivo structures of new blood vessel networks.

This PhD project is part of an interdisciplinary, NWO-funded Vici-project, with the aim to unravel how modifications of the extracellular matrix, as they can occur for example near tumors, can modify the structure of new blood vessel networks.

In the Mathematical Biology group multiscale mathematical models of cell-microenvironment interactions during blood vessel formation in tumors are being developed. To refine these models, we test and try to falsify the predictions of the models by comparing them to in vitro and in vivo cellular networks. For this, we use multi-well time-lapse microscopy imaging of cellular networks grown under different chemical and mechanical conditions. With fluorescent labelling, we can track individual cells within the network to gain a multiscale understanding of the network formation.

Brief biography

Tessa received a MSc degree in Nanobiology from the Erasmus University Rotterdam and the Delft University of Technology in 2020. She started her PhD research at the Institute of Biology Leiden in 2021.