First person – Ahsan Javed

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. Ahsan Javed is first author on ‘ Piezo1 balances membrane and cortex tension to stabilize intercellular junctions and maintain the epithelial barrier’, published in JCS. Ahsan is a PhD Student in the lab of Sara Wickström at the University of Helsinki, Finland, investigating how Piezo1 protein helps skin cells sense tension at molecular scale and allows the efficient formation of cell–cell junctions essential for maintaining the skin barrier as we age.