Nikhil Gupta is a materials scientist, researcher, and professor based in Brooklyn, New York. Gupta is an associate professor at New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering department of mechanical and aerospace engineering. He is one of the leading researchers on lightweight foams and has extensively worked on hollow particle filled composite materials called syntactic foams. Gupta developed a new functionally graded syntactic foam material and a method to create multifunctional syntactic foams. His team has also created an ultralight magnesium alloy syntactic foam that is able to float on water.