Prof. Gupta completed his B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur in 1985 and then obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. in Radio Astronomy from the University of California, San Diego, in 1990. In 1991, he joined the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA-TIFR, Pune) and since then has been associated with the institute in different capacities. In March 2005, he was appointed as a chief scientist at the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) observatory and was later made the Dean of the facility. GMRT is a world-class instrument built and operated by NCRA-TIFR.
His research areas cover different aspects of the study of pulsars - rapidly rotating compact neutron stars that emit intense beams of radio emission. He has been involved in discovering some very unique and interesting pulsars in specific locations such as supernova remnants, globular clusters and compact sources of high energy emission.
His other prime area of interest is the development of new instrumentation and signal processing techniques for radio astronomy. He is also leading the NCRA team in the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), an international collaborative project to design and build the next generation global radio astronomy facility. He has made over 80 contributions in international journals and proceedings.
In 2007, he was honored with the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award for his significant contributions in physical sciences.