F.J. Quintana, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA, is the Mercator fellow to the CRC/TRR167. He is an excellent young scientist with outstanding international reputation in the field of neuroimmunology, especially with regard to the regulation of adaptive immunity, type I interferon responses and the regulation of astrocyte activity during neuroinflammation. His areas of research perfectly complement the main research focus of the NeuroMac consortium which is on the innate immune cells during CNS development, homeostasis and pathology. Quintana has already been appointed a Honorary Professor at the Medical Faculty of the University of Freiburg in 2017, where he is involved in teaching and practical courses of neuroimmunology for medical and biological students. As a Mercator fellow, he will support the CRC/TRR167 NeuroMac with his expertise on adaptive immune cells, type I interferons and astrocytes during neuropathology. He will perform personal visits to labs in Freiburg, Berlin and Rehovot. He will further support the CRC/TRR167 in performing analyses of astrocytes on a molecular level and by providing different lentiviral vectors for manipulating the microglia-astrocyte interface.