Professor Vidita Vaidya received her undergraduate training in Life Science and Biochemistry at St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai, India. She did her PhD work at Yale University, USA 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. 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. Their work was recognized by the National Bioscientist Award in 2012 and the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Medical Sciences in 2015. Vidita received the Nature Award for Excellence in Mentoring in the Mid-Career Category for India, 2019. She is a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy and a senior Editor of the European Journal of Neuroscience.