Sumantra “Shona” Chattarji
Director, CHINTA
Professor Sumantra “Shona” Chattarji is the Director of CHINTA, TCG CREST. He is also a Visiting Professor of Simons Initiative for the Developing Brain, University of Edinburgh, UK. Before joining CREST, he was a Senior Professor of National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Tata Institute for Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India.
Sumantra Chattarji received his Master’s degree in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He then went on to do a Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University and Salk Institute. After post-doctoral research at Yale University and MIT, he started his own laboratory at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India in 1999. His research has shown that prolonged stress leaves its mark by enhancing both the physiological and structural basis of synaptic connectivity in the amygdala, thereby triggering the emotional symptoms observed in stress-related psychiatric disorders. His lab also studies synaptic defects and their reversal in Fragile X Syndrome, the leading identified cause of autism. Prof. Chattarji was recently awarded the Global Champion Award by the Fragile X Research Foundation, USA. He is also a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and International Union of Physiological Sciences, and a member of EMBO.