Vidita Vaidya

Vidita Vaidya is an Indian neuroscientist and Professor at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. She was a former Senior Research Fellow of the Wellcome Trust and a former associate of the Indian Academy of Sciences. Her primary areas of research are neuroscience and molecular psychiatry.
Early life.
Viditas parents, who are clinician scientists, and her uncle (a Malaria Parasitologist) were a big motivation for her to pursue neuroscience. Her father is a clinical pharmacologist, and her mother is an endocrinologist. She was also deeply influenced by Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall, during her teenage years.
Education.
Vidita received her undergraduate degree from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai in Life Sciences and Biochemistry. She obtained her doctoral degree in Neuroscience at Yale University in. Her postdoctoral work was done at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and at the University of Oxford in UK, which she completed in March, 2000.
Career.
She joined the Department of Biological Sciences, TIFR at the age of 29, in March, 2000, as a Principal Investigator. She has been a Wellcome Trust Overseas Senior Research Fellow and an Associate of the Indian Academy of Sciences from 2000-2005. Vidita studies the neurocircuits that regulate emotion and how these mechanisms are influenced by life experiences, and antidepressants. She also investigates how changes in brain circuits form the basis of psychiatric disorders like depression and how early life experiences contribute to persistent alterations in behaviour. She 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 and the Indian Academy of Sciences.
Vidita's research has also been centered around the role of serotonin in shaping neurocircuits of emotion during critical periods of postnatal development and on the mechanism of action of fast acting antidepressant treatments. Her lab work is conducted on lab rats and mice. Vidita's particular field of interest lies in understanding how individuals develop vulnerability or resilience to stress-associated psychopathology.
In January 2020, Vidita joined the editorial board of The European Journal of Neuroscience (EJN) as one of a panel of four new senior editors. EJN is the official journal of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS).
Features in Books and Videos.
Vidita has been featured in Lilavathi's Daughters, a compilation of biographical essays on Indian women scientists, and on "The Life in Science" blog. In 2015, she gave a TEDx talk at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai in which she spoke about how stress can change our neurological makeup. She has also been featured in TIFRs "Chai and Why".
Achievements.
Her work has garnered the 2015 Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology for Medical Sciences. She is also a recipient of the National Bioscience Award for Career Development in 2012. She received the Nature Award for Mentorship in Science, 2019, in the mid-career category.
Publications.
Her site at TIFR hosts a complete list of her publications.
Personal life.
In her spare time, she likes to travel, dance, and read.