My lab uses Drosophila to investigate the biology of epithelia, the fundamental cell type of metazoan animals. Our interests range from the cell biology of apicobasal polarity to exploiting the fly in order to model mammalian cancer and its associated lethality. In this talk I will focus on our work concerning tissue morphogenesis, exploring how genetic programs create physical forces to specify the distinct organ forms that underlie their functions. Our system is the egg chamber of the Drosophila ovary, a simple acinus-like organ that undergoes elongation coincident with a remarkable tissue-wide rotation. I will discuss our work which combines genetic approaches with imaging and biophysical tools to address issues of microtubule-based symmetry-breaking, planar-polarized cellular organization, and ECM-directed morphogenesis.