Who is Nitin Gupta? IIT topper returns to India inspired by SRK film. Why did you choose to study mosquito brains? | Today’s news
After cracking one of India’s toughest exams, most students of Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) often dream of securing well-paying positions in Multinational Companies (MNCs), while some want to settle abroad. However, Nitin Gupta, who secured AIR 1 in 2000, took a completely different path and Shah Rukh Khan’s film Swades influenced his decision.
Gupta graduated from IIT in Computer Science in 2000. After securing the top position, he moved to the University of California, San Diego. His PhD at the University of California, San Diego focused on bioinformatics and systems biology. He then spent time in the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory before moving to the National Institutes of Health as a postdoctoral researcher.
But an overseas research career and the prospect of working for a multinational company did not appeal to him. He returned to India in 2014 and joined IIT Kanpur as a professor.
Today, his research focuses on mosquito brains, where he tries to understand how the nervous system determines what is worth watching and what to avoid – even if the animal has not previously learned from such an experience.
The institute describes him as a “computer engineer turned neuroscientist.”
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Why did Gupta return to India despite building a research career overseas? India Today reported that the Shah Rukh Khan starrer Swades was one of the influences behind his decision. Gupta also acknowledged that the film inspired his comeback.
Who is Nitin Gupta: From IIT-JEE topper to neuroscientist
Gupta’s academic journey has therefore moved considerably beyond his original background in computer science. His work now combines neuroscience, biology, and computational approaches to investigate how neural systems transform information from the environment into behavior.
His work has received several recognitions including Innovative Young Biotechnologist Award in 2015, Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance Fellowship in 2016, Swarnjayanti Fellowship in Life Sciences in 2021, CNR Rao Faculty Award in 2022 and S Ramchandran National Bioscience Award in 2023.
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He was appointed to the Joy Gill Chair in 2025 and also received the Excellence-in-Teaching Award from IIT Kanpur.
The journey from an IIT-JEE AIR 1 in Computer Science to studying mosquito brains shows how Gupta’s career has shifted away from the conventional IIT trajectory. At the center of his research is a much broader question: how does the nervous system take information from the world and transform it into action?
Why did IIT-JEE AIR 1 Nitin Gupta choose to study mosquito brains?
Gupta’s return to India was not just a decision to work in his native country. This also marked a major shift in his scientific journey.
His research shifted toward neuroscience, focusing on understanding how the brain processes sensory information and translates it into behavior. His lab uses insects, especially mosquitoes, flies and grasshoppers, as models to study this question.
Mosquitoes offer a particularly useful model because their behavior is strongly influenced by olfaction. Gupta’s lab investigates how neural circuits process odors and how the brain determines which signals should attract an animal and which should trigger avoidance.
One example involves studying how a mosquito’s brain responds to the odor of a human host compared to a repellent. The broader question is how the nervous system processes sensory information and decides what behavior should follow.
