Bhattacharya is a Professor, Dept. of Organic Chemistry, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India. He obtained his PhD from Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA, in bio-organic chemistry. He then worked as NIH Postdoctoral Research Associate at MIT, with Nobel laureate H. Gobind Khorana, focusing on the biology and chemistry of signal transduction involving membrane proteins. He subsequently moved to IISc Bangalore where he ultimately became full professor. He is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Sciences (INSA) and the Indian Academy of Sciences. He has won numerous awards including the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Chemical Sciences, the TWAS Prize in Chemical Sciences in 2010, AV Rama Rao Endowment Lecture 2010, a J C Bose fellowship and the GD Birla Award.