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Additive manufacturing (AM) promises to revolutionize manufacturing by producing complex parts with tailored mechanical properties through local microstructure control. The main challenge is to control or prevent columnar (elongated) growth morphology which is prevalent in AM parts. Here, we elucidate mechanisms of microstructure control that promote favorable equiaxed grains (aspect ratio close to 1) using a laser beam shaping strategy. This requires an accurate thermal profile that is only captured using advanced predictive simulation that couples full laser ray tracing, ultra-fast hydrodynamic melt flow and the cellular automata method for grain growth. We investigate columnar to equiaxed microstructure transition during single-track laser powder bed fusion processing of 316 L stainless steel using Gaussian (circular) and elliptical (transverse and longitudinal) laser beam shapes. We demonstrate that the …