Usha Bhosle earned her B.Sc. degree (1969) from the University of Pune and M.Sc. degree (1971) from Shivaji University, Kolhapur. She commenced her postgraduate studies in Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in 1971 and got her Ph.D. degree under the guidance of S. Ramanan.

Academic and Research Achievements : The main focus of Usha Bhosle?s work has been the moduli spaces of bundles (vector bundles, principal G-bundles, parabolic bundles etc.) on curves and higher dimensional varieties. In her maiden work, she determined an inductive formula to compute Poincare polynomials of the moduli spaces of stable vector bundles on curves. She (with Ramanan) found beautiful descriptions of moduli spaces of stable vector bundles on hyperelliptic curves by connecting them to pencils of quadrics, this led to several new results. She later turned to the technically difficult field of moduli spaces of tor- sionfree sheaves on singular curves and produced very interesting, significant results. She is regarded a leading expert in this field in the world. Her notion of generalised paraboic bundles enabled her to construct (normal) compacti- fications of moduli spaces of vector bundles and principal G-bundles on nodal and cuspidal curves. It also gave a very effective tool to study and answer a large variety of questions on torsionfree sheves on singular curves. It made this field, dormant for many years, very active and attracted many new play- ers.

Other contributions : Usha Bhosle is a member of the VBAC (Vector bundles on algebraic curves) international committee. She was a Senior Associate of International Centre of Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy.

Awards and honours: Usha Bhosle was elected a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore and the National Academy of Sciences, India (Alahabad). She is a recipient of the Stree Shakti Science Samman (2010) and Ramaswamy Aiyer Memorial Award (2000).