Who is Nitin Gupta? IIT topper returns to India inspired by SRK's film. Why did he choose mosquito brains study?

Nitin Gupta secured an IIT degree in computer science in 2000. After securing the top rank, he moved to the University of California, San Diego.

After cracking one of India's toughest examinations, most students of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) often dream of securing high-paying jobs at multinational companies (MNCs), while some aspire to settle abroad. However, Nitin Gupta, who secured AIR 1 in 2000, chose a completely different path, and his decision was influenced, by the Shah Rukh Khan film Swades.

Gupta secured an IIT degree in computer science in 2000. After securing the top rank, he moved to the University of California, San Diego. His PhD at the University of California, San Diego, focused on bioinformatics and systems biology. Following this, he spent time in a 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. In 2014, he returned to India and joined IIT Kanpur as a professor.

Today, his research focuses on mosquito brains, where he is trying to understand how the nervous system determines what is worth pursuing and what needs to be avoided – even when the animal has not previously learnt from such an experience.

The institute describes him as a “computer engineer-turned-neuroscientist.”

Why did Gupta return to India despite building a research career overseas? India Today reported that the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Swades was among the influences behind his decision. Gupta has also acknowledged that the film inspired his return.

Who is Nitin Gupta: From IIT-JEE topper to neuroscientist

Gupta's academic journey has therefore moved considerably beyond his original training in computer science. His work now combines neuroscience, biology and computational approaches to investigate how nervous systems turn information from the environment into behaviour.

His work has received several recognitions, including the Innovative Young Biotechnologist Award in 2015, the Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance Fellowship in 2016, the Swarnajayanti Fellowship in Life Sciences in 2021, the CNR Rao Faculty Award in 2022 and the S Ramchandran National Bioscience Award in 2023.

In 2025, he was named to the Joy Gill Chair and also received an Excellence-in-Teaching Award from IIT Kanpur.

The journey from an IIT-JEE AIR 1 in computer science to studying the brains of mosquitoes highlights how Gupta's career moved away from the conventional IIT trajectory. At the centre of his research is a much broader question: how does a nervous system take information from the world and turn it into action?

Why did IIT-JEE AIR 1 Nitin Gupta choose to study mosquito brains?

Gupta's return to India was not simply a decision to work in his home country. It also marked a major shift in his scientific journey.

His research moved towards neuroscience, with a focus on understanding how the brain processes sensory information and converts it into behaviour. His laboratory uses insects, particularly mosquitoes, flies and grasshoppers, as models to study this question.

Mosquitoes offer a particularly useful model because their behaviour is strongly influenced by their sense of smell. Gupta's lab examines how neural circuits process odours 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 smell of a human host compared with a repellent. The broader question is how the nervous system processes sensory information and decides what behaviour should follow.

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