The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for the year 2021 in Biological Sciences has been awarded to Dr Arun Kumar Shukla of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. Dr Shukla has made outstanding contributions towards the current understanding of activation, signaling and regulation of G protein-coupled receptors. His research findings have uncovered previously unknown paradigms of GPCR signaling and identified novel strategies to modulate GPCR functions for designing novel therapeutics with minimal side-effects.