The research in Shankar’s group focuses on two main areas. The first is to understand how the coordinated cell movements that shape the early mammalian embryo prior to and during gastrulation are controlled. The second is to understand how the heart forms and starts to beat. Shankar’s group takes a multidisciplinary and collaborative approach to address these questions, using techniques spanning molecular genetics, lightsheet and confocal time-lapse imaging, single cell approaches, proteomics and embryo explant culture. Shankar is also passionate about science outreach. His group participates regularly in science festival, for which they have developed 3D printed models of developing embryos and a virtual reality based embryo and microscopy image volume explorer.