Abstract
First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Biology Open, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Hagen Gegner is first author on ‘High levels of floridoside at high salinity link osmoadaptation with bleaching susceptibility in the cnidarian-algal endosymbiosis’, published in BiO. Hagen conducted the research described in this article while a PhD Candidate in Christian R Voolstra's lab at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. He is now interested in symbiotic interactions in the marine environment by combining physiological measurements with metabolomics, and is currently working as an editorial professional at Frontiers, Switzerland.