First person – Varmila Kulasegaram and Daphne Alves Dias

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. Varmila Kulasegaram and Daphne Alves Dias are co-first authors on ‘ Curcumin delays cytokinesis in fission yeast by targeting the septin ring’, published in JCS. Varmila is a third-year PhD student in the lab of Qian Chen at Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, The University of Toledo, USA, investigating ion channel-mediated Ca2+ dynamics during cytokinesis and cytoskeleton dynamics, combined with live-cell imaging and genetic approaches in fission yeast. Daphne undertook this work as a PhD student in the laboratory of Anna Lvovna Okorokova-Façanha at State University of Northern Rio de Janeiro Darcy Ribeiro, Brazil, and is currently a Core Facility Scientist at the same institution working in the lab of Diogo de Abreu Meireles. She investigates using fission yeast as a model for understanding cell signaling, bioenergetics and mechanisms controlling morphogenesis and cell proliferation.