ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Luca Sardo is co-first author on ‘Real-time visualization of chromatin modification in isolated nuclei’, published in Journal of Cell Science. Dr Sardo is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Biological Sciences, University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, investigating the mechanisms of HIV neuropathogenesis and latency.