Videos of the Scientific lecture and Award Function
Speaker 1:
Prof. Vidita Vaidya
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai
Prof. Vidita Vaidya received her undergraduate training in Life Science and Biochemistry at
St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai. She obtained her doctoral degree in Neuroscience at Yale
University, and after postdoctoral fellowships at the Karolinska Institute and Oxford
University, she returned to a faculty position at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
She is a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Sciences and
the Indian Academy of Sciences. She received the National Bioscientist Award in 2012, the
Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Medical Sciences in 2015 and the Nature Award for
Mentorship in 2019. Her team’s work has been recognized by the J.C. Bose Fellowship in
2021 and the Infosys Prize in Life-Sciences in 2022. Her research group is interested in
understanding the neurocircuitry of emotion, its modulation by life experience, and the
alterations in emotional neurocircuitry that underlie complex psychiatric disorders like
depression. She is committed to mentorship, equity, and diversity in STEM.
Speaker 2:
Prof. G. Mugesh
Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru
Prof. G. Mugesh leads a group in Chemical Biology, Bioinorganic and Medicinal Chemistry
at IISc Bengaluru. After his B.Sc. (Univ. of Madras, 1990), M.Sc. (Bharathidasan Univ.,
1993) and Ph.D. (IIT-Bombay, 1998) degrees he received an Alexander von Humboldt
postdoctoral fellowship fo research at the Technical University, Braunschweig followed by a
Skaggs postdoctoral fellowship at the Scripps Research Institute.
Prof. Mugesh has authored more than 160 publications in international peer reviewed journals
and guided 35 Ph.D. students. He received several awards and recognitions, which include:
Distinguished Alumnus Award of IIT Bombay; Swarnajayanti Fellowship; SASTRA-CNR
Rao Award in Chemistry & Materials Science; Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award, Infosys
Prize in Physical Sciences; etc. Prof. Mugesh is a fellow of the National Academy of
Sciences, India (NASI), Indian Academy of Sciences (IAS), Indian National Science
Academy (INSA) and the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC).
Chief Guest:
Prof. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya
Director, TCG Centres of Research and Education in Science
and Technology (CREST)
Prof. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Director of TCG-CREST, is a condensed matter physicist and
works primarily on dynamical aspects of disordered, soft and granular systems. Educated at
Presidency College, Kolkata, University of Delhi and Northwestern University in the USA, he
did post-doctoral research at the Magnet Laboratory at MIT and at the University of Chicago.
He spent two decades at the Corporate Laboratories of Exxon Corporation and the NEC
Corporation in New Jersey, US before returning to India as Director of the Tata Institute of
Fundamental Research in Mumbai.