Prof. G.V. Shivashankar is currently the Deputy Director of Mechanobiology Institute, National University of Singapore. Prof. Shivashankar’s laboratory is focused on understanding the role of cell geometry on nuclear mechanics and genome regulation in living cells using a multi-disciplinary approach. He carried out his PhD research at the Rockefeller University (1994-1999) and postdoctoral research at NEC Research Institute, Princeton USA (1999-2000). He started his laboratory at the National Center for Biological Sciences, TIFR- Bangalore, India (2000-2009) before relocating to a tenured faculty position at the National University of Singapore in 2009. His scientific awards include; the Birla Science Prize (2006), The Swarnajayanthi Fellowship (2007) and was elected to the Indian Academy of Sciences (2010). More recently he also heads the Joint Research Laboratory with FIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology (IFOM), Milan, Italy and was appointed as an IFOM-NUS Chair Professor in 2014.