Maheswaran Shanmugam was born in Tamil Nadu, India. He finished his Bachelor’s degree in 2000 from Bishop Heber College, Trichy. Completed Master’s degree in 2002 in Bharathidasan University, Trichy. Earned his Ph.D. degree at the University of Manchester (P.I: Prof. Richard. E. P. Winpenny), Manchester, UK in 2006. He was joined as a postdoctoral scholar at University of California, Berkeley (P.I : Prof. Jeffrey R Long) and University of California, San Francisco (P. I: Prof. Stanley B Prusiner, Nobel Laureate in Medicine 1997) from 2006 to 2009, then moved to University of California, Davis (P.I: Prof. Louise A Berben) for his second postdoc from 2009 to  2011. Since 2015, he has served as an Associate Professor and from 2019 onwards he is working as Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.