Gaiti Hasan obtained her BSc (1976) degree in Zoology from the University of Delhi. She did her MSc in Life Sciences followed by an MPhil (1980) from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi after which she obtained her PhD (1983) on "Studies on the ribosomal RNA genes of Trypanosoma brucei" from the University of Cambridge, UK. She started her career as Visiting Fellow and Research Associate in the Molecular Biology Unit, TIFR, Mumbai (1983 89). She moved as a founder member to the National Centre for Biological Sciences (TIFR) in 1989. Hasan was a Visiting Scientist to the Department of Biology, Brandeis University, USA (1990-92). She came back as a Fellow at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), TIFR, Bangalore (1992-94). Currently she is a Senior Professor at NCBS after working as Reader (1994-98), Associate Professor (1998-2004) and Professor (2005-2012).

Academic and Research Achievements: At TIFR, Hasan completed the genetic and molecular mapping of an olfactory mutant in Drosophila, while in the Department of Biology, Brandeis University she initiated work on Drosophila intracellular calcium signaling by cloning and characterizing two Drosophila genes for intracellular calcium channels recently discovered in vertebrates. At TIFR, Bangalore, her laboratory pioneered the methods of reverse genetics to generate the first mutants in the Drosophila gene for the Inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate receptor and continues to work on intracellular calcium signaling in Drosophila growth and neuronal function. Recent emphasis of her work is to understand the implications of intracellular calcium signaling in human disease.

Other Contributions: Professor Gaiti Hasan was the Head of Academic activities at NCBS (2004-2009). She is a Member of the Society for Neuroscience, USA (since 2003). She is also on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Neurogenetics (2008), Invertebrate Neuroscience (2008), Current Science (2015 and an Associate Editor with Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience (2015).

Awards and Honours: Professor Gaiti Hasan is a recipient of INLAKS Foundation Scholarship, British Overseas Research Student Award, Wellcome Trust Fellowship and a Rockefeller Biotechnology Career Fellowship. She was elected a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore (2006), Member of the Asia-Pacific Molecular Biology Network (2007) and Fellow of The World Academy of Sciences, 2015.