Gautam Kalghatgi worked for 31 years at Shell Research in the U.K. followed by 8 years in Saudi Aramco before retiring in June 2018. He has been a Visiting Professor at Oxford University; Imperial College, London; KTH Stockholm; TU Eindhoven; Sheffield University and Shanghai Jiao Tong university.

He has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers), I.Mech.E. (Institution of Mechanical Engineers), the Combustion Institute and the ISEES (International Society for Energy Environment and Sustainability).

He has published around 140 papers and a book, Fuel/Engine Interactions, on combustion, fuels and engine research and on energy. He has also edited two other books on engine research. This work is cited widely with a current H index of 63 on Google Scholar. He has been on the editorial boards of many technical journals and has been active on many industry and academic bodies. He has received many awards for his work including the 2021 ASME Internal Combustion Engines award, Huw Edwards award of the Institute of Physics, SAE Horning Award, and the Sugden award of the Combustion Institute.

He has a B.Tech. from I.I.T. Bombay (1972) and a Ph.D. from Bristol University (1975) in Aeronautical Engineering. His Ph.D. project was on supersonic jet impingement. He did post-doctoral research on turbulent combustion at Southampton University (1975-1979) before joining Shell.