First person – Rishika Abrol and Syeda Farhana Afroz

First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Rishika Abrol and Syeda Farhana Afroz are co-first authors on ‘ Histone deacetylase 7 mediates lipopolysaccharide-inducible mitochondrial fission in macrophages’, published in JCS. Rishika and Syeda Farhana conducted the research described in this article while PhD students in Professor Matt Sweet's lab at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Rishika is now a postdoc in the lab of Associate Professor Elissa Deenick at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney, Australia, investigating how immunometabolic pathways in macrophages and B cells shape immune responses and drive disease. Syeda Farhana is now a postdoc in the lab of Associate Professor Nuno Raimundo at Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA, USA, investigating the role of mitochondria–lysosome contacts in driving microglial senescence and their contribution to neurodegeneration.