There is a certain fascination around IITians in India. The IIT tag can open doors to careers ranging from scientists at ISRO to startup founders. Many IIT graduates are also working at organisations such as NASA and major Silicon Valley companies.
But Nitin Gupta, who secured AIR 1 in the IIT-JEE in 2000, chose a different path.
After completing his B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur, Gupta moved to the University of California, San Diego. He later earned a PhD in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology. But instead of taking up a job in a multinational company, he decided to return to India.
In 2014, Gupta joined IIT Kanpur as a professor.
Today, his research focuses on the brains of mosquitoes and other insects. His work looks at how the brain processes smells and decides whether an organism should move towards or away from something.
Gupta has said that the film Swades inspired him to return to India. But his return was not just about coming back home. It also meant choosing a career path different from the one many expected after he topped the IIT-JEE.
From IIT-JEE AIR 1 to IIT Kanpur faculty
Gupta topped the IIT-JEE in 2000 and joined IIT Kanpur to study Computer Science. He completed his B.Tech in 2004.
His interest in biology grew during his time at IIT. This eventually led him to UC San Diego, where he completed his PhD in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology in 2009.
His research combined computer science and biology, including work involving proteins and genomes.
After completing his PhD, Gupta spent time in a cognitive neuroscience laboratory at UC San Diego. His work there focused on how motivations such as hunger or the desire for money are translated into physical actions.
He later worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institutes of Health from 2010 to 2014, where he studied the electrical activity of neurons.
By then, his career had moved from computer science towards neuroscience.
In July 2014, he returned to India and joined IIT Kanpur’s Department of Biological Sciences and Bioengineering as a faculty member.
He had left IIT Kanpur as a computer science student and returned years later to study the brain.
Inspired by Swades
Gupta has said that after returning from the US, he had two options — joining industry or pursuing research. He chose research because it offered him greater freedom to explore scientific questions.
He has also said that he had always wanted to return to India and that Swades played a role in inspiring that decision.
At IIT Kanpur, his research began focusing more closely on neuroscience. His laboratory studies how the brain processes smells and converts that information into behaviour.
The research involves insects such as mosquitoes, flies and grasshoppers. Scientists use techniques including electrophysiology, behavioural experiments, histology, genetic manipulation and computational modelling.
One of the key questions is how a brain decides what to approach and what to avoid, sometimes without having previous experience with it.
Why study the mosquito brain?
Gupta’s laboratory has studied the antennal lobe, a part of the mosquito brain involved in processing information related to smell.
In a 2023 paper published in Nature Communications, Gupta and his collaborators studied how neurons in the antennal lobe of Aedes aegypti represent different smells.
The researchers used techniques including intracellular electrophysiology, morphological reconstruction and immunohistochemistry to study the neurons and their connections.
Mosquitoes are particularly useful for studying how the nervous system converts information into behaviour. They respond to chemical signals in their surroundings and use smells to locate hosts.
Human bodies release a mixture of chemical signals. Some of these can help mosquitoes locate a person, while others can influence whether they move towards or away from a particular source.
The research therefore looks at what happens between detecting a smell and producing a behavioural response.
Gupta’s laboratory has also studied differences in neural connections between insects and how those differences can still produce organised responses to smells.
More recent research has looked at neuromodulation — how an insect’s internal state can change the way its brain responds to smells. His work has also examined changes in female mosquitoes’ attraction to human odours after they have taken a blood meal.
Research beyond mosquitoes
Gupta’s work is not limited to insects.
His group also helped develop TreadWill, an automated cognitive behavioural therapy programme designed for people who may have limited access to professional therapists.
A randomised trial involving 598 participants in India found that participants who completed at least half of the programme experienced reductions in symptoms of depression and anxiety compared with the waitlist group.
Although studying mosquito brains and developing tools related to mental health may appear unrelated, both areas involve understanding how the nervous system receives information and turns it into action.
Gupta’s own career has followed a similar journey.
He started with computer science, moved into bioinformatics and later entered neuroscience. His research eventually took him to the tiny neural circuits inside an insect’s brain.
Over the years, he has received several awards, 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 received an Excellence-in-Teaching Award from IIT Kanpur.
A look at the careers of 20 IIT-JEE toppers between 2000 and 2019 by ThePrint found that 12 were working outside India. Gupta was among those who returned.
But he did not return to pursue a conventional technology career.
More than two decades after topping the IIT-JEE, Gupta is now studying neurons inside the brain of a mosquito, trying to understand a much bigger question — how does a brain process information and decide what to do?