Chandan Dasgupta earned his BSc degree in 1971 from Presidency College, University of Calcutta and MSc degree from Delhi University in 1973. He did his doctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania, USA under the supervision of Professor AB Harris and obtained PhD degree in Physics in 1978. Subsequently, he did post-doctoral research at the University of California, San Diego and Harvard University, and worked as a faculty member in the School of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Minnesota for a few years. He joined the Indian Institute of Science in 1987, where, at present, he is a Professor.

Academic and Research Achievements: Dasgupta's area of specialization is theoretical condensed matter physics with emphasis on statistical mechanics. His work elucidated the role of topological defects in various phase transitions. He developed a real-space renormalization group method for studying one-dimensional systems with strong disorder, which has found applications in a wide variety of problems. Professor Dasgupta's work has played an important role in the development of a theoretical understanding of the effects of quenched disorder in condensed matter systems. His studies of the equilibrium properties of vortex matter in high-temperature superconductors with different kinds of pinning have provided explanations of a variety of experimental results. Professor Dasgupta has also made important contributions in the theory of the structural glass transition. He pioneered the use of density functional theory, finite-size scaling methods and replicated liquid-state theory in the study of the glass transition. He has taught many courses at undergraduate and graduate levels and mentored 12 PhD students and several postdoctoral associates. He has published more than 100 research papers and several review articles in internationally reputed journals and written many book chapters.

Other Contributions: Professor Dasgupta played a major role in the establishment of the Centre for Condensed Matter Theory at the Indian Institute of Science in 1998 and acted as the Convenor of the Centre (1998-2005). He is an Honorary Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research and holds a Visiting Professorship at the University of Minnesota, USA.

Awards and Honours: Professor Dasgupta is the recipient of several awards and honours that include: the Warner Teutsch Memorial Prize (1974), the Fellowship of the Alfred P Sloan Foundation (1984-87), DAE-Raja Ramanna Prize (1999), Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore (1992), Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (India), Allahabad (2000), Fellow of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) (2007) and JC Bose National Fellowship (2006-10).