I must confess, I came to cell biology rather serendipitously; perhaps my journey may carry some ideas for young scientists who want to prepare themselves for studying cell biology today. Although I was interested in biology as a high school student, I found myself as an undergraduate at the Indian Institute of Technology, studying to become an engineer. Fortunately for me, the chemistry department was offering a few courses in biological chemistry, and I quickly decided to go through with the initial grounding (we used to call it grinding) in basic physics, chemistry, mathematics and engineering sciences, before joining the chemistry program with a specialization in bio-organic chemistry. For my Ph.D., I chose a biological subject, the mechanism of GPI-anchoring of the Variant Surface Glycoprotein, the protective coat of the protozoan pathogen that causes African sleeping sickness. The idea then was to identify a pathogen-specific pathway that can be targeted to cure this devastating disease—a goal that seems hopelessly naive now that we know that the GPI-anchor is made in almost all eukaryotes via a highly conserved pathway and that it has important cellular functions. Satyajit Mayor Having been exposed to the world of exotic biomolecules, my training in chemistry and physics led me to explore how these molecules manufactured inside a cell would behave in a cellular context and to examine more general questions of evolutionary commonality of cellular processes and behavior. I have since focused on GPI-anchored proteins as well as many other lipids and lipid-anchored proteins, in their “natural habitat,” the plasma membrane of the mammalian cell, a more tractable system than the parasite cell membrane. I realize now that this serendipitous path has been quite instrumental in shaping many of the questions I am asking today. Being open-minded about interesting observations other than those one may have been expecting, coupled with a firm grounding in the physical and natural sciences and a healthy respect for what could happen in the very special cellular environment, form a good base (I believe) for studying cell biology, a field still full of tantalizing mysteries. One of the greatest mysteries is that although constituents in a cell are never static and every structure, configuration, and organelle is actively turning over, a cell retains a consistent form (phenotype) and makes reproducible physiological responses in a given niche. This occurs over different time (milliseconds to hours if not longer) and spatial (nanometer to hundreds of microns) scales, for example, in the construction of signaling complexes at the cell surface, or in the precise three-dimensional arrangement of chromosomes inside a eukaryotic nucleus, in response to a given niche. Elucidating how cells reproducibly put molecules together may depend on understanding nonequilibrium processes that are maintained by continuous energy consumption and mechanisms that violate detailed balance. Take the cell membrane, a cellular material that I happen to be fascinated with. Insights about this complex milieu will follow from our understanding of how the cell is able to regulate the local configuration of molecules in a two-dimensional fluid matrix, in the face of thermal dissipation and the thermodynamic propensities of the molecules embedded in this physical medium. To understand this complex system, we will need to build robust theoretical frameworks crossing traditional interdisciplinary boundaries, notably to encompass information theory and evolutionary biology, incorporating new ideas of active systems that are being explored in soft-matter physics. Like chemistry, before insights of the atomic theory explained why elements had their particular physical and chemical properties, cell biology is still a largely phenomenological discipline, which is why it is essential to remain open to serendipitous observations and to seek insights, wherever they can be profitably found. I was fortunate to return to work to India when it was beginning to undergo a major positive transformation in government policy toward science funding (Mayor, 2005 ). Cell biology is as yet nascent in India, but the potential is huge; funding continues to be generous, and there are no restrictions on the scope of exciting basic scientific questions that can be addressed. Exactly how the cell biology community evolves will depend on maintaining the current collaborative spirit and encouraging interdisciplinary academic research and exploration of science for its own sake, as well as attracting talent to take up the challenge of charting new territory in India. This will in turn depend on how young scientists are trained—perhaps the place of serendipity in the history of science and the importance of being receptive to diverse inputs deserves a mention.