Nitin Gupta

Biography

Dr. Nitin Gupta graduated from IIT Kanpur in 2004 with a B.Tech. in computer science and an interest in biology. He then joined the PhD program in bioinformatics and systems biology at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). After completing 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 post-doc to learn electrophysiology. He joined the BSBE faculty in July, 2014.

Research Interest

The remarkable capabilities organized by the brain -- from seeing to singing, from remembering to running -- originate in the electrical activities of neurons. Neurons interact with each other forming circuits, which process sensory information and drive appropriate behaviors. We are interested in understanding the fundamental mechanisms used by neural circuits for processing information. Our initial focus is on circuits in deeper layers of the olfactory system (sense of smell). We will use a variety of insects as model systems, including grasshoppers, flies and mosquitoes, and a variety of techniques, including in vivo electrophysiology, histology, behavioral observations, genetic manipulations, and computational modeling.