In 1996, Prof. Chakrabarty was awarded the Ph.D. in Physics from the California Institute of Technology, following two years at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (1988-90) as a staff Physicist working on the Berkeley Automated Supernova Search. Prior to that, he completed his S.B. in Physics at MIT, in 1988.

Professor Chakrabarty returned to MIT in 1996 for a two-year appointment as a NASA Compton GRO Postdoctoral Fellow, followed by a year spent as a Visiting Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford University (1998). In 1999, he accepted an Assistant Professorship within the Department of Physics at MIT. He was promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure, in July 2004. Professor Chakrabarty was named head of the Department of Physics on August 29, 2022 (see MIT News).

Awards
Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2001-03)

Areas of Research
Observational high-energy astrophysics, including X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy, optical astronomy, and neutron stars and black holes.