Professor Sabyasachi Bhattacharya is a physicist and works on dynamical aspects of disordered, soft and granular condensed matter systems. He was a Distinguished Professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) of which he was also the former Director. Professor Bhattacharya received his B.Sc. at the Presidency College, Kolkata, M.Sc. at the University of Delhi, and his Ph.D. at Northwestern University, all in Physics. He conducted post-doctoral research at the National Magnet Laboratory at MIT, University of Rhode Island. He was at the University of Chicago as a James Franck Distinguished Fellow before joining the Exxon Corporate Research Laboratory. He subsequently worked at the NEC Research Institute at Princeton where he was a Fellow and the Chair of the NEC Board of Fellows. He also held the Jagadish Chandra Bose Distinguished University Professor at Presidency University(College) and the C.V. Raman University Professorship at the Ashoka University.

Professor Bhattacharya recently served, among other organizations, on the Editorial Board of the Reports on Progress in Physics, the Technology Advisory Council of British Petroleum, the IIT-Council of the Ministry of Human Resource Development and the Council of IIT-Bombay and the Mentor Group of Presidency University, Kolkata. He is a frequent visitor to the New York University, the University of Chicago, the Cavendish Laboratory and the Trinity College, Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and served both as its International Councillor, as well as a member of its Committee of Internal Scientific Affairs.