Nitin was born in Mumbai, India and grew up in the nearby city of Pune. As an undergraduate student in Microbiology, he studied novel culturing methods for bacteria and spent his summers playing cricket and hiking the Himalayas studying rotifer biodiversity.

 

After three years of undergraduate studies, he joined the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore as an Integrated PhD student in Biology. Nitin received his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Rochester in the laboratories of Allen Orr and Jim Fry. Nitin then did his post-doctoral work in Harmit Malik's laboratory at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, where he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fellow of the Life Sciences Research Foundation. Nitin is now an Assistant Professor/ Mario R. Capecchi Endowed Chair in Biology at the Department of Biology at University of Utah.