Shashank ShekharAssistant Professor

• Early Career Award in Mechanobiology by Biophysical Society (2026).
• Invited speaker at the “New & Notable” symposium of the 2026 Biophysical Society annual meeting.
• “Cell Scientist to Watch” by Journal of Cell Science (2024).
• Maximizing Investigators' Research Award for early career investigators, NIH (2021).
• Whitman Early Career Award, Marine Biological Laboratory, USA (2019, 2017).
• Provost Innovator Inquiry Award, Brandeis University (2018).
• HHMI Interfaces Scholar Award (2018).
• “Grand advances in Biology” Prize by French Academy of Sciences (2016).

Ph.D., University of Twente (The Netherlands), 2012

1. Shekhar S. Actin dynamics: Filament end remodeling drives rapid depolymerization. Current Biology (2026)
2. Shekhar S^#, Fowler V.M. and Gregorio C. G. Renaissance at the actin filament pointed end: Mechanisms of assembly, capping and depolymerization. Current Opinion in Cell Biology (2026)
3. Reddy, V, Arya A. and Shekhar S.^#. Twinfilin is a non-processive depolymerase which synergizes with formin to dramatically accelerate actin filament uncapping by 300-fold. PNAS (2025)
4. Shekhar S.^#, Guo H., Colin S.P., Marshall W., Kanso E. and Costello J.H. Cooperative hydrodynamics accompany multicellular-like colonial organization in the unicellular ciliate Nature Physics (2025).
5. Towsif E.T. and Shekhar S.^#. The actin filament pointed-end depolymerase Srv2/CAP depolymerizes barbed ends, displaces capping protein and promotes formin processivity. PNAS (2025)
6. Ulrichs H. and Shekhar S.^#. Profilin affects microtubule dynamics via actin. Journal of Cell Biology (2024)
7. Ulrichs H., Gaska I. and Shekhar S.^#. Multicomponent regulation of actin barbed end assembly by twinfilin, formin and capping protein. Nature Communications (2023).

Research Area

Molecular and Organismal Biophysics – Actin dynamics, Microfluidics, Phagocytosis, Intracellular manipulation and Collective behavior.

Research Interests

Dynamic remodeling of the actin cytoskeleton is essential in key cellular processes such as cell migration, cell division and cell morphogenesis. The goal of my lab is to understand how emergent cellular actin dynamics arises from complex interplay between numerous actin regulatory proteins and mechanical forces. Biological research over the last two decades has uncovered many proteins involved in cellular actin dynamics. However, we do not yet understand how these factors function together in complex multicomponent molecular assemblies to produce emergent intracellular actin dynamics.

Further, actin filaments not only generate forces, but their dynamics are in turn affected by external mechanical forces such as those arising from membrane tension and the extracellular matrix. Using single filament and single molecule force spectroscopy, we are investigating how the actin cytoskeleton senses and responds to mechanical cues at the molecular scale. My lab takes an integrated multi-disciplinary approach combining biophysical experiments with mathematical modelling to tackle these questions.