First person – Michael Bachmann

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. Michael Bachmann is first author on ‘Induction of ligand promiscuity of αVβ3 integrin by mechanical force’, published in JCS. Michael conducted the research described in this article while a PhD student in Prof. Martin Bastmeyer's lab at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. He is now a postdoc in the lab of Prof. Bernhard Wehrle-Haller at the Université de Genève, Switzerland, investigating how integrin αVβ3 is able to tune its ligand selectivity based on mechanical pull causing changes in integrin conformation.