Uttam grew up in a small village near Kolkata, West Bengal, India. He completed his B.Sc. (Honours) and M.Sc. in Chemistry at the University of Calcutta. He then moved to Bangalore to pursue his PhD at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), focusing on peptides and peptidomimetics under the guidance of Prof. T. K. Chakraborty. Following the completion of his PhD in 2020, Uttam joined as postdoctoral scholar in Prof. Yftah Tal-gan's lab, where he worked on peptide-based tools for studying Quorum Sensing (bacterial communication). In 2023, he joined the Waters lab for his second postdoctoral research position to learn more about epigenetic reader proteins.