Sujit Datta is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Princeton University. He earned a BA in mathematics and physics and an MS in physics in 2008 from the University of Pennsylvania, and then a PhD in physics in 2013 from Harvard, where he studied fluid dynamics and instabilities in soft and disordered media with Dave Weitz. His postdoctoral training was in chemical engineering at Caltech, where he studied the biophysics of the gut with Rustem Ismagilov.
Datta joined Princeton in 2017, where his lab studies the dynamics, self-organization, and applications of complex, soft (“squishy”), and living systems. Datta’s research has revealed and shed new light on the fascinating behaviors manifested by complex fluids and bacterial populations in complex environments, guiding the development of new approaches to environmental remediation, energy production, agriculture, water security, and biotechnology. He also actively leads outreach efforts in STEM to bring together diverse perspectives and provide access to researchers from traditionally underrepresented groups in studies of soft and living systems.
Datta’s scholarship has been recognized by awards from a broad range of communities, reflecting its multidisciplinary nature, including through the AIChE 35 Under 35 Award, ACS Unilever Award, Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, three awards from the APS (Early Career Award in Biological Physics, Andreas Acrivos Award in Fluid Dynamics, and the Apker Award), the Arthur Metzner of the Society of Rheology, Pew Biomedical Scholar Award, NSF CAREER Award, and multiple commendations for teaching.