GV SHIVASHANKAR

Principal Investigator, Mechanobiology Institute, IFOM-NUS Chair Professor, National University of Singapore

shiva.gvs@gmail.com
+65 6516 2712 ext 62712
Level 10 T-Lab
National University of Singapore
5A Engineering Drive 1
Singapore 117411

Curriculum Vitae

Affiliations
Head, IFOM-NUS Joint Research Laboratory, National University of Singapore

Spark-In-Science Program
Spark-in-Science is a non-profit initiative aimed at igniting scientific temper in high school and pre-university students.

In the News

• Today Online: Study to detect cancer before symptoms develop shows promise
• Straits Times: NUS research: Squeezing mature cells to become stem cells
• Channel News Asia: Becoming Human, Episode 2: Unnatural Genius

The Shivashankar Lab is hiring multiple PhD and Postdoctoral positions starting in Jan 2020. Learn more.

GV Shivashankar

Principal Investigator (2011-2019)

Research Areas

Nuclear mechanics, 3D chromosome organization, genome regulation, disease diagnostics

Nuclear Mechanogenomics & Cancer Diagnostics Laboratory

Shivashankar’s lab pursues research in understanding the role of cell mechanics on nuclear mechanotransduction and genome regulation.

Extra-cellular micro-environmental signals are transduced to the nucleus to regulate diverse biological processes including cellular differentiation, development and homeostasis; but the underlying mechanisms are still unclear. In this context, how such micro-environmental signals alter nuclear mechanical architecture and how it integrates with the 3D organization of chromosomes and transcription networks are rather unexplored. Using a multidisciplinary approach combining high resolution optical imaging, quantitative single-cell biology, machine learning and functional genomics, our laboratory investigates the principles underlying the coupling between nuclear mechanics and genome regulation. Our recent and ongoing work provides modular links between cellular geometry and nuclear mechanics and its impact on transcription dependent 3D organization of chromosomes and reprogramming. Such modular links define the normal state of cells and are altered during diseases. Hence our studies also have profound impact on developing single-cell nuclear biomechanical markers for early disease diagnosis and therapeutic intervention.

Biography

Shivashankar is a principal investigator at the Mechanobiology Institute, National University of Singapore. His laboratory is focused on understanding the role of cell mechanics on nuclear mechanotransduction 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. He was the Deputy Director of the Mechanobiology Institute (2011-2019). More recently he also heads a joint research laboratory with the FIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology (IFOM), Milan, Italy and was appointed as an IFOM-NUS Chair Professor in 2014. His scientific awards include the Birla Science Prize (2006), the Swarnajayanthi Fellowship (2007), and he was elected to the Indian Academy of Sciences (2010) and to the EMBO membership (2019). He will be relocating to a tenured Full Professorship at ETH Zurich jointly with the Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland, to start the Laboratory of Mechano-Genomics in January 2020.

Education

PhD The Rockefeller University, USA

Funding

Mechanobiology Institute, Ministry of Education Tier-3 Co-Investigator Grant & IFOM-MBI Joint Research Laboratory, Singapore.

Recent Publications