Anil Kumar Gupta is a scientist and researcher from India who served as a Professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur untill 2025. He was also the former director (2010–2017) of the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Dehradun, India. His teaching interests include applied micropaleontology, paleoceanography and marine geosciences.
With a focus on the Indian monsoon, Gupta has made contributions to the fields of micropaleontology, paleoclimatology, and paleoceanography with special reference to the Indian monsoon system. He carried the publication of Inventory of Glacial Lakes of Uttarakhand. More than 176 of his articles in high-impact journals have been published in journals like Nature, Science, Nature Geoscience, Scientific Reports, Geology, Geophysical Research Letters, and Palaeo3 . In order to understand the history of Indian monsoon variability as well as oceanic changes in the Indian Ocean, Gupta has a long history of scientific acumen and research nuances. He has studied benthic and planktic foraminifera as well as their stable isotopes from Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) cores. At time scales ranging from decadal to millennial and orbital, he has made contributions to the knowledge of the past behavior of the Indian monsoon system and ocean circulation. His research includes the first description of the Indian Ocean Dipole in a paleo record and the documentation of Bond cycles in the paleo record of the Indian monsoon over the Holocene.
To understand precipitation variations in the region, Gupta has initiated new research projects on lake deposits and cave carbonates (speleothems) from different parts of the Indian landmass. He has produced the longest speleothem record from India that documents important shifts in the intensity of the Indian monsoon for the first time. At the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, he has created laboratories that meet international standards and had the equipment necessary to do high resolution paleo-monsoonal research utilizing marine sediments, lake deposits, cave carbonates. Prof. Gupta has mentored 20 Ph.D. students.
Early life and career
Gupta was born in Budaun district of Uttar Pradesh in 1960. In 1980 he completed his Bachelor of Science with Honors (B.Sc. [Hons]) from Aligarh Muslim University, and in 1982 he pursued Master of Science (M.Sc.) from Banaras Hindu University.
Since 2003, Gupta has been working as a Professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur. Prior to that, he worked as a lecturer (1987–1990), Assistant Professor (1990–1999), and Associate Professor (1999–2003) in the same institution. He was also the department's head during 2006-2009.In 2010, he became the director of the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Dehradun, and served it for seven years.Thereafter, he retired from the post of Professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in 2025.
From 1982 to 1987, he was a research fellow at the Banaras Hindu University. In 1990, he visited Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA, for a year to do his post-doctoral research. Gupta also worked as a senior NRC, USA Research Scientist at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Boulder, USA in 2001.
Honours and achievements
Gupta has received different awards. In 2010 he received TWAS Prize from the World Academy of Sciences, Trieste. In 2012, he was granted the “J.C. Bose National Fellowship” by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), New Delhi, India. The Indian Science Congress Association honored him with the “Young Scientist Award” in 1990 for his remarkable contribution to Indian scientific research. The National Research Council (NRC) of the United States of America awarded him a Senior Research Fellowship Award in 2001 to work at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Lab in Boulder, Colorado. In 1999, Gupta received Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Fellowship to work at Shimane University, Matsue, Japan.
His honors and achievements include: