First person – Max Fernkorn

ABSTRACT 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. Max Fernkorn is first author on ‘ Med12 cooperates with multiple differentiation signals to facilitate efficient lineage transitions in embryonic stem cells’, published in JCS. Max conducted the research described in this article while a PhD student in Christian Schröter's lab at Department of Systemic Cell Biology, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology, Dortmund, Germany and is now a postdoc in the lab of Micha Drukker and Christian Schröter at Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research, Leiden University, The Netherlands. He studies how embryonic stem cells implement lineage decisions based on cell–cell communication.