Vidita Vaidya is an Indian neuroscientist and professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. Her primary areas of research are neuroscience and molecular psychiatry. Early life Vidita's parents, Dr. Rama Vaidya and Dr. Ashok Vaidya are clinician scientists, and her uncle Dr. Akhil Vaidya (a Malaria Parasitologist) were a big motivation for her to pursue a career in research, with a focus on Neuroscience. Her father is a clinical pharmacologist, and her mother is an endocrinologist. She was also influenced by reading about the life and work of the primatologists 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 with Professor Ronald Duman, whose mentorship shaped her research career. Her postdoctoral work was done at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden with Professor Ernest Arenas and at the University of Oxford in UK with Professor David Grahame-Smith. 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. One of the focus areas of her research group is the role of the serotonin2A receptor both as a target of serotonergic psychedelics that exert powerful effects on mood-related behavior, and also in how it contributes to shaping the long-lasting consequences of early adversity. 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, National Academy of Sciences, India and the Indian Academy of Sciences. She received the J.C. Bose Fellowship from SERB, Govt. of India in 2021. 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