Sujit Datta is a Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering, and Biophysics at the California Institute of Technology, where he moved in September 2024. He was previously on the faculty at Princeton, where he started as an Assistant Professor in 2017 and was promoted to Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies 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 research is in the study of transport phenomena, which aims to predict and control the movement of physical entities such as molecules and cells. In particular, motivated by challenges in biotechnology, energy, medicine, and sustainability, his research group studies the transport of soft (“squishy”) and living systems—e.g., “complex” fluids, gels, and multicellular bacterial populations—through complex environments ranging from soils, sediments, and porous rocks to gels and tissues in our bodies. Sujit and his group have pioneered experimental techniques—combining microscopy, microfluidics, materials science, and biophysical characterization—to directly visualize such transport processes in model complex environments with systematically-tunable properties in the lab. He has thereby established a way to bridge the gap between idealized lab studies in uniform environments and complex processes in real-world settings. By integrating such experiments with theoretical/computational modeling, applying ideas from fluid and solid mechanics, biological physics, chemical dynamics, colloidal science, polymer physics, statistical mechanics, and network science, Sujit and his group have 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 biotechnology, environmental remediation, flow chemistry, and sustainability.

Sujit also actively leads outreach efforts in STEM to bring together diverse perspectives and provide access to researchers from traditionally under-represented groups in studies of soft and living systems. In addition to leading professional activities for a number of scientific societies and agencies, Sujit serves on the editorial boards of Annual Reviews of Condensed Matter Physics and the Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics.

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-Scholar Award, 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”).

Sujit grew up in Toronto, but lost most of his Canadian accent by living in Abu Dhabi, Philadelphia, Boston, and Los Angeles before moving to 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.