Professor Hayden conducts research aimed at the development of innovative ways of using in-vitro techniques for diagnostic and biomedical purposes. His interdisciplinary research activities are orientated towards current scientific challenges and draw on the fields of electronics, optics, microfluidics and materials sciences. He is currently investigating magnetic and optical techniques for the functional diagnostics of blood cells.

Professor Hayden studied biochemistry at the University of Vienna and completed his doctorate there in 1999. After holding a postdoctoral position at Harvard University and completing his postdoctoral teaching qualification in Analytical Chemistry at the University of Vienna, he joined the IBM Research Laboratory in Zürich in 2005. Since 2007, Professor Hayden has been researching organic electronic techniques for the medical imaging and in-vitro diagnosis of blood cells at Siemens Corporate Technology and Siemens Healthcare. In 2017, he was appointed to the Heinz-Nixdorf-Chair for Biomedical Electronics at TUM.