Kevin Chalut is a physicist by training, who became fascinated in recent years with stem cells and development. In particular, he has been trying to seamlessly connect physics and engineering with stem cell and developmental biology to better  understand how cells make fate decisions. He received a PhD in Physics from Duke University and his post-graduate work was in biomedical engineering and biophysics, with a particular focus on imaging applications to cancer and stem cells. Since 2011, he has been a Royal Society University Research Fellow, which has allowed him the freedom to transition to a highly multidisciplinary research programme studying the physical biology of cell fate choice.