Dr. Nitin Gupta is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and Bioengineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. He graduated from IIT Kanpur in 2004 with a B.Tech. in computer science and joined the PhD program in bioinformatics and systems biology at the University of California, San Diego. After earning his PhD in 2009, he spent a few months in a cognitive neuroscience lab at UCSD, and then moved to the National Institutes of Health as a postdoc to learn electrophysiology. He returned to India in 2014 to start his research lab at IIT Kanpur.
Dr. Gupta is a computer engineer-turned-neuroscientist. After his graduation from IIT Kanpur, he worked on computational biology during his PhD and experimental neuroscience during his postdoc. His lab now works on understanding how neural circuits encode innate behavioral preferences, using the insect olfactory system (sense of smell) as a model system. Current work in his lab examines the neural responses in the brain of a mosquito when it detects the attractive odor of a human or the repulsive odor of a repellent cream. This work involves a variety of techniques, including electrophysiology, histology, behavioral observations, genetic manipulations, and computational modeling. The lab is also studying how neural circuits control similarities and differences across individuals of the same species. A part of Dr. Gupta's lab also works on automated digital interventions for treating mental health problems.
