Roop Mallik did a PhD in Condensed matter Physics before moving to Biology via a brief postdoctoral stint in Chemistry. He joined the Department of Biological Sciences (TIFR, Mumbai) in 2006. He moved to the Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering in IIT Bombay in 2020. He was an International Senior Research Fellow with the Wellcome Trust (UK) from 2006-2012, a Senior fellow with the Wellcome-DBT India Alliance from 2013-2018, and continues to be a Senior fellow with the Wellcome-DBT India Alliance from 2020 onwards. He was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar award in Biological Sciences (2014), Infosys Prize in Life Sciences (2018), G.D. Birla Award for Scientific Research (2019) and Associate Membership of EMBO. His research uses methods and ideas from the physical sciences, the life sciences and computational science. Motor proteins are the unit generators of force inside biological cells. Motors almost always assemble on a lipid membrane before they do anything. Mallik explores this Membrane-Motor interface at different levels of complexity.