Dipankar Bhattacharya is the Sunanda and Santimay Basu Chair Professor in Astrophysics at Ashoka University. Prior to joining Ashoka he was the Dean, Core Academic Programmes at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA). He received his Bachelors’ and Masters’ degrees in Physics from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, and his PhD from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. He carried out post-doctoral research at the University of Amsterdam and the University of California, Santa Barbara and was a member of the faculty at the Raman Research Institute, Bengaluru before moving to IUCAA. His research interests cover both theoretical astrophysics and observational astronomy, with particular emphasis on High Energy Astrophysics including compact stars, black holes and cosmic explosions. He is closely associated with the Indian space astronomy mission AstroSat and is the chair of its Science Working Group.