Debalina Sengupta | AIChE

Debalina Sengupta

Associate Director
TEES Gas and Fuels Research Center Food, Energy, Water Nexus Coordinator, Texas A&M Energy Institute

Dr. Sengupta’s research focuses on sustainability in the context of process systems engineering. She has worked on process design, integration, intensification, optimization, life cycle assessment and other related concepts for Sustainable Supply Chain Design of Biofuels, Natural Gas, and Consumer Products, and decision-making in Sustainability using metrics and indicators. She has also been actively involved in the development of educational modules for sustainable manufacturing. Dr. Sengupta is currently appointed as the Associate Director of the TEES Gas and Fuels Research Center, Water, Energy and Food Nexus Coordinator at Texas A&M Energy Institute, and Lecturer at Texas A&M University, Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering.

Dr. Sengupta serves as co-PI or senior personnel on several multi-million-dollar Department of Energy (DOE) research projects from the RAPID Manufacturing USA Institute (Process Intensification) and the CESMII Manufacturing USA Institute (Smart Manufacturing). At RAPID, she is working on process systems using desalination for shale gas wastewater treatment. She was also integral to the successful National Science Foundation planning grant, “Engineering Research Center for Resiliency Enhancement and Disaster-Impact Interception (READII) in the Manufacturing Sector.”  Following up from that work, her current research interests are related to resilience in the process industrial sector under disaster conditions. She has organized five workshops funded by the National Science Foundation in the area of disaster resilience and is also working on several publications that capture the impact of disasters in the manufacturing sector.

She has authored two books, “Chemicals from biomass: integrating bioprocesses into chemical production complexes for sustainable development” by CRC Press (2012), and “Measuring Progress towards Sustainability” by Springer (2017). Apart from this, she has several peer reviewed journal publications, book chapters, and conference proceedings. She has been an invited speaker at many national and international conferences. Dr. Sengupta is extremely well connected through the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). She has held official positions of highest order at AIChE’s Environmental Division (Past Chair), and Fuels and Petrochemicals Division (First Vice-Chair). She has been responsible for programming for the AIChE Environmental Division with more than 20 oral and poster session arrangements and interacting with many chairs and co-chairs. She is also an active member of AIChE’s Institute for Sustainability, Center for Energy Initiatives and is part of many other activities with the organization. She was the inaugural recipient of the Early Career Award from AIChE Environmental Division in 2016.

Dr. Sengupta has been an invited panelist at TERI’s World Sustainable Development Summit 2020 in the Thematic Track: Energy management solutions for SMEs. She has also been invited keynote speaker at the ProBioRefine 2018 conference in Bangkok, Thailand. She has been invited speakers and panelists at several of AIChE Annual and Spring conference sessions and special workshops, including recently, the Fuels &Petrochemicals Division Executive Panel - Embracing the Challenge: Meeting the Global Demand for More and Cleaner Energy, AIChE Spring Meeting 2019, and Industrial Water Use and Reuse Workshop, AIChE Annual Meeting 2019. She has also organized and is in the standing committee for the Natural Gas Utilization series of workshops from the AIChE Center for Energy Initiatives.

Dr. Sengupta is a critical thinker, and likes to blog, read, and write in her spare time. Her interests also are in cooking, traveling, and photography. She enjoys spending time with family, friends. Her favorite places are New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, and Kolkata, West Bengal, India, her hometown.