Bandopadhyay was born in 1944 at Tirupathi, Andhra Pradesh, grew up in New Delhi and obtained her education at the Kirori Mal College.
She has been first woman to become a Fellow of the Aerospace Medical Society of India and the first Indian woman to have conducted scientific research at the North Pole.
She is also the first woman officer to have completed the Defence Service Staff College course in 1978. She is an aviation medicine specialist and a member of the New York Academy of Sciences as well.
