Dr. Sara Wickström is the Sigrid Juselius Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of Helsinki, and was recently appointed as the new Director of Cell and Tissue Dynamics at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine. Her research focuses on how mechanical forces act in collaboration with cellular signals to influence cell fate and position. She discusses her work on mechanotransduction and its applications for cell culture and organ engineering, as well as her research on the hair follicle stem cell niche. She also talks about running an interdisciplinary lab, and what could make academia a more attractive career path.