The dazzling beauty, the astounding diversity of self-organization -- how do these features reflect a cell's primary function? How do they determine a cell's role as a driver in the microscopic world? For Dr. Gaudenz Danuser, these questions are central to his work as a world-renowned data scientist and cell biologist. This lecture correlates information from his team's recent work on actin, a protein governing the crawling movements of cells that helps promote cancer cells' ability to resist chemotherapy, with the concept that cell shape is a driver and not merely the result of cell function.