I’m Udipta Chakraborti, an ecologist, behavioural ecologist and neuroethologist passionate about understanding how animals think, learn, and make decisions, as well as how ecosystem works.

My research career has spanned a wide range of topics, from individual and collective behaviour to ecological interactions and ecosystem ecology, unified by a deep curiosity about the mechanisms underlying animal behaviour and its relation to the ecosystem.

Currently, I am a Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellow at the NeuroSU – Institut de Biologie Paris Seine (IBPS), Sorbonne University, CNRS, Paris, France, where I am part of the Insect Cognitive Neuroethology (ICON) Team led by Prof. Martin Giurfa.

My current research explores the cognitive neuroethology of honey bees, focusing on how pesticide exposure affects the brain and influences complex learning processes. Through this work, I aim to uncover how pesticides shape cognition and behaviour at both the neural and behavioural levels.

Before joining the MSCA Fellowship, I was an IISERK postdoctoral fellow at the ANT LAB, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata, India working under Prof. Sumana Annagiri.
Here, my work focused on:

• Collective and individual decision-making in ants through the lens of Classical Game Theory.

• Associative learning and memory dynamics, examining how ants process information and adapt to environmental changes.

• Body posture and movement tracking in ants.

• Exploring the relationship between behaviour, environment, and physiological stress, providing new insights into how colonies coordinate and optimize performance.

I earned my PhD from the University of Kalyani, as a Department of Science and Technology (DST)- West Bengal project fellow, under the supervision of Prof. Kakali Bhadra, investigating the role of insects as pollinators and visitors in mangrove ecosystems, with a focus on their foraging behaviour and spatiotemporal association patterns. This work sheds light on how insect behaviour influences plant reproductive success and ecosystem functioning.

I also pursued my research on the insect pollinators of mangroves as a Junior Research Fellow at the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), under the supervision of Dr. K. Venkataraman (Former Director ZSI) and Dr. Bulganin Mitra (Former Scientist C, ZSI).