Prof. Vidita Vaidya

Professor - Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR)

Biography

Professor Vidita Vaidya received her undergraduate training in Life Science and Biochemistry at St. Xavier's College in Mumbai, India. She completed her doctoral work at Yale University, where she worked on the role of BDNF in the actions of stress and antidepressant treatments. Following postdoctoral fellowships at the Karolinska Institute and Oxford University she returned to a faculty position at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai, India in 2000.

Professor Vaidya has been a Wellcome Trust Senior Overseas Research Fellow. She is a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy. She has served on the Human Frontiers of Science Program (HFSP) Long Term Fellowship review committee for four years, and was vice-chairperson and Chairperson of the committee. Her research group at TIFR is interested in understanding the neurocircuitry of emotion, its modulation by life experience and the alterations in emotional neurocircuitry that underlie complex psychiatric disorders like depression and anxiety. She also serves on the editorial board of national and international journals, and has been a member of review committees both within India and internationally. She is currently a member of the Women in Science Panel of the Indian Academy of Sciences. She is passionate about working to expand the presence of women in the STEM disciplines, and is also committed to scientific outreach. Professor Vaidya has over 50 publications to her name, was awarded the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in 2015 in the medical sciences category and is a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy.