Shantanu Basu is an expert in studies of the early stages of star formation and protoplanetary disk formation and evolution. He is one of the originators of the Migrating Embryo Model for protoplanetary disk evolution, which is a unified scenario for angular momentum transport, binary star and giant planet formation, and the formation of ejected freely floating low mass objects. He has recently also contributed to understanding the formation of supermassive black holes at high redshift. Shantanu has organized a series of international winter schools on astronomy that had a special focus on star and planet formation. In 2013, Asteroid 277883 Basu was named after him by the International Astronomical Union. Shantanu has authored the textbook Essential Astrophysics: Interstellar Medium to Stellar Remnants, published by CRC Press in 2021.