Hans Kiener earned his medical degree from the University of Vienna. After his residency in internal medicine at the Vienna General Hospital, Division of Rheumatology, Department of Medicine III, University of Vienna, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School with Dr. Michael Brenner focusing on synovial biology in the context of inflammatory arthritis. In his work, he identified caderhin-11, a homophilic cell-to-cell adhesion molecule, expressed on the surface of fibroblast-like synoviocytes, as a critical component for the formation of the distinct synovial architecture. Cadherin-11 contributes to the invasive capacity of synovial fibroblasts and their inflammatory activity. In 2006 he returned to his home institution, the Medical University of Vienna. Since then, he serves as a senior physician-scientist at the Division of Rheumatology with particular interest in the medical care of patients with systemic rheumatic diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis.