MID-CAREER AWARD

Siddhartha Das, University of Maryland

Professor Siddhartha Das is currently a Full Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland. His nomination emphasizes his recognition as a national and international leader in research, teaching, and service to the community. His contribution has led to unprecedented advances in the soft electrokinetics, or more specifically, to the problem electrokinetic transport in micro-nanochannels functionalized with grafted and charged polyelectrolyte (PE) chains present in the form of “brushes”. He developed fundamental theories that showed how the presence of grafted PE brushes led to the localization of the electric double layer away from the channel walls, which in turn enhanced the strength of the various type of electrokinetic transport, such as electroosmotic, diffusioosmotic, and thermoosmotic transport. Second, Prof. Das pioneered the use of all-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to provide the first-of-its-kind atomistic description of the electrokinetic transport in PE-brush-grafted nanochannels to discover several path-breaking findings such as coion-driven electroosmotic transport, simultaneous energy generation and flow enhancement during pressure-driven electrokinetic transport, non-linearly large enhancement of the strength of electroosmotic transport, anti-electrophoretic effects, etc. Prof. Das leads a large research group at UMD and has already graduated 25 M.S., Ph.D., and postdocs with four of them being already working as professors in various parts of the world. Prof. Das has been a champion of diversity in higher education with a big section of his graduate students and postdocs being from the underrepresented minority and international community. He has been a PI/co-PI of research grants worth $11.5 million (from agencies like DOE, NSF, ARL, NASA, etc.), with the U.S. DOE continuously supporting his research on soft electrokinetics since 2017. He has published 210 journal articles (with many of them in journals like Nature Materials, Nature Communications, JACS, PRL, PNAS, Science Advances, ACS Nano, Advanced Materials, etc.) and has delivered 6 keynote lectures and 36 invited talks. Prof. Das’ pathbreaking research has led to major national and international awards and recognitions including the Fellowship of the American Physical Society (specifically for his research on PE brushes and electrokinetic transport in PE-brush-grafted nanochannels), Fellowship of the Royal Society of Chemistry (U.K.), Fellowship of the Institute of Physics (U.K.), promotion with early tenure at UMD, Junior Faculty Outstanding Research Award of the Engineering school of UMD, Pioneering Investigator recognition of ChemComm journal, Emerging Investigator award of the Soft Matter and PCCP journals, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur 2018 Young Alumni Achiever Award, and Inclusion as the Top 2% scientists in the Stanford University list (for years 2021-2024).