Nitin Gupta, who secured All India Rank 1 in IIT-JEE in 2000, pursued a doctorate in bioinformatics and systems biology at the University of California, San Diego, followed by postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of Health. Despite building a promising overseas research career, he returned to India in 2014 to join IIT Kanpur as a professor, citing inspiration from Shah Rukh Khan's film Swades as a factor in his decision.

Gupta's research now focuses on neuroscience, specifically studying how mosquito brains process sensory information and convert it into behaviour. His work examines neural circuits and how animals determine which environmental signals warrant approach or avoidance. He has received multiple honours including the Innovative Young Biotechnologist Award (2015), Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance Fellowship (2016), Swarnajayanti Fellowship in Life Sciences (2021), CNR Rao Faculty Award (2022), and S Ramchandran National Bioscience Award (2023). In 2025, he was appointed to the Joy Gill Chair and received an Excellence-in-Teaching Award from IIT Kanpur.