Sujit Datta (Curriculum Vitae)
Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering, and Biophysics
ssdatta@caltech.edu / @TheSquishyLab

Sujit Datta is a Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering, and Biophysics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he moved in 2024. He was previously on the faculty at Princeton University, where he started as an Assistant Professor in 2017 and was promoted to Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies of Chemical & Biological Engineering in 2023. He also co-led the Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) on Living & Soft Matter of the Princeton Materials Research Science and Engineering Center from 2022-2024.

Sujit earned a BA in Mathematics and Physics and an MS in Physics in 2008 from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied carbon nanomaterials with Charlie Johnson. He then moved to Harvard, where he studied fluid dynamics and instabilities in soft and disordered media with Dave Weitz and obtained his PhD in Physics in 2013. His postdoctoral training was in Chemical Engineering at Caltech, where he studied the biophysics of the gut with Rustem Ismagilov.

Sujit’s scholarship has been recognized by awards from a broad range of different communities, reflecting its multidisciplinary nature, including the Allan P. Colburn and 35 Under 35 Awards of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, three awards from the American Physical Society (Early Career Award in Biological Physics, Andreas Acrivos Award in Fluid Dynamics, and Apker Award), Pew Biomedical Scholar Award, Arthur Metzner Award of the Society of Rheology, Unilever Award of the American Chemical Society, Camille Dreyfus Teacher-ScholarAward, NSF CAREER Award, Soft Matter Lectureship of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and multiple commendations for teaching (including being described as “the most caring and engaging professor I have met at the entire university”).

Along with research and teaching, Sujit leads professional activities for a number of scientific societies and agencies, including serving on the editorial boards of Annual Reviews of Condensed Matter Physics and the Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics, as well as on the Executive Committee of the American Physical Society Division of Soft Matter and the Area 1J Fluid Mechanics Programming Committee of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

Sujit grew up in Toronto, but lost most of his Canadian accent by living in Abu Dhabi, Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, and New Jersey. In his free time, Sujit likes to play with his five year-old daughter, cook, eat, run, and reminisce about his past life as a competitive kickboxer.