Abhik Gupta, Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of Ecology and Environmental Science at Assam University, India. His core area of research comprises environmental pollution and its effects on biodiversity. His other research interests include animal behavior and environmental ethics. Prof. Gupta has contributed numerous journal articles and book chapters in these areas.
One of his major interests in astrobiology is the development of altruistic traits in extraterrestrial societies, which led to his contribution of a chapter in the book Extraterrestrial Altruism: Evolution and Ethics in the Cosmos, published by Springer in 2014.
The awards and grants received by Prof. Gupta include the Water Voice Messenger Award at the 3rd World Water Forum at Kyoto, Japan, in 2003; the Fellow of the National Institute of Ecology, India, in 2006; the Erasmus Mundus Senior Scholarship in Bioethics at the Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, in 2008; the EU IndiaNAMASTE Academic Staff Grant at the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Spain, in 2014; and the India-Australia Joint Project under the AISRF scheme in 2015.
He was also the Vice-President (India) of the Asian Bioethics Association from 2007-2010, as well as Chair of the Science and Technology Committee of the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute from 2006-2008 and 2010-2012. Prof. Gupta has presented papers and chaired sessions in over thirty seminars and conferences in sixteen countries.