Bikas Kanta Chakrabarti earned his BSc and MSc degrees from Calcutta University. He joined the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata in 1975 and got his PhD (1979) degree from Calcutta University. During 1979-81, he worked in the Department of Theoretical Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford and in the Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Cologne, Cologne for his post-doctoral work. In 1983, Professor Chakrabarti joined Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata as a Lecturer and is presently a Senior Professor in the same Institute. He holds an honorary Visiting Professorship of Economics at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.

Academic and Research Achievements: Chakrabarti's studies include wide range of topics such as Condensed matter physics, statistical physics and computational physics; Fracture, breakdown and earthquake; Statistics of polymers in random media; Dynamic hysteresis and transitions under oscillating and pulsed fields; Quantum phase transitions, annealing and computation: in quantum ising ANNNI & spin glass models; Physical and computational models of mind and brain and Econophysics and Sociophysics. He has published over 145 research papers in international refereed journals, have written two books (Oxford University Press and Springer) and four review articles (including one in Physics Reports, two in Reviews of Modern Physics). He has mentored a large number of students including about 14 PhD students.

Other Contributions: Chakrabarti initiated, along with colleagues, the Conference Series: Statphys-Kolkata in 1992 and got its Vol I - Vol VI published in Proceedings in Physica A (Elsevier) during 1992-2007 and also Econophys-Kolkata in 2005 and got its Vols I, II and III published in Proceedings in New Economic Windows Series (Springer) in 2005, 2006 and 2007, respectively. He has edited eleven books (Elsevier, Springer and Wiley-VCH).

Awards and Honours: Professor Chakrabarti was awarded INSA Medal for Young Scientists (1984) and received the SS Bhatnagar Award of CSIR (1997). He is a Fellow of Indian Academy of Science, Bangalore (1997). He has been conferred with AJC Bose Memorial Lecture at Bengal Engineering & Science University, West Bengal (2007) and Institute Lecture of IIT, Roorkee (2008).