
Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering Sujit Datta has received an NSF CAREER Award, recognizing his potential to serve as a lifelong leader in education and research.
Soft matter expert Sujit Datta has been promoted to associate professor of chemical and biological engineering, effective July 1, 2023.
Datta joined the department as an assistant professor in 2017. Since then, he has established himself as a leading researcher in the study of how soft materials — everything from synthetic fluids to living cells — interact with and move through complex real-world environments. He has also made an indelible mark as a teacher, mentoring star graduate students, introducing undergraduates to advanced topics, and inspiring high school students in summer programs.
Through clever experimental design, especially the use of transparent hydrogel beads and other optically clear structures that mimic natural settings, his research has illuminated a wide range of phenomena and made an impact in several fields — the life sciences, drug design and delivery, environmental remediation, agriculture and industrial processes. He and his group have discovered new ways in which bacteria move, grow, and self-organize in complex environments, both as individuals and collectives; outlined key dynamics in the flow of polymeric fluids through porous rocks; uncovered new dynamics in the way water-absorbant materials swell and shrink; and provided insights into the processes by which particulates, such as microplastic pollutants, spread through our environment.. Datta’s group has also developed a technology called PoreBiome with the potential to aid the study and treatment of microbes in the gut, lungs and skin.
Before joining Princeton, Datta did his undergraduate work in math and physics at the University of Pennsylvania; earned a Ph.D. in physics at Harvard; and did postdoctoral research in chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology, or Caltech. He has been named a Pew Biomedical Scholar, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, and one of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers’ 35 Under 35. He has also won the American Chemical Society’s Unilever Award and the American Physical Society’s Biological Physics Early Career Award, among many others. Datta, who is currently the Department’s director of graduate studies, is an associated faculty member in the Princeton Bioengineering Initiative, the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, the High Meadows Environmental Institute and the Princeton Materials Institute.