Faculty Directory

EDUCATION

• Ph.D., Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur Department of Mechanical Engineering, 2010
• B.Tech. (Hons.), Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur Department of Mechanical Engineering, 2005

BACKGROUND

Dr. Siddhartha Das, FAPS (Fellow of the American Physical Society), FRSC (Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, U.K.), FInstP (Fellow of the Institute of Physics, U.K.), FIET, FLS, FIAAM joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park in March, 2014. He was promoted to Associate Professorship (with tenure) in August 2019. Dr. Das received his Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in 2010 in the area of theoretical microfluidics. Following his Ph.D., Dr. Das joined the Physics of Fluids Group in University of Twente, the Netherlands as a Postdoc and worked on surface nanobubbles, capillarity and soft wetting. After his stint in the Netherlands, Dr. Das went for his second Postdoc in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Alberta, Canada. In Alberta, Dr. Das was honored with the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship, the most prestigious postdoctoral fellowship of Canada.

Dr. Das' research interests span different areas of micro-nanoscale fluid mechanics and interactions of soft matter and complex interfaces with fluid mechanics. He is particularly interested in understanding issues such as the properties of poleyelctrolyte brushes and brush-supported water moelcules and counterions (probed using atomistic simulations and machine learning), wetting of a soft solid, electrohydrodynamics past a soft interface, evaporation-mediated self-assembly of soft and rigid particles, mechanics of complex fluids during 3-D printing, interactions of liquid with 2-D materials like graphene and hexagonal Boron Nitride, micro-nanoscale water transport in trees, etc.

Dr. Das has been the recipient of numerous awards and accolades including (a) Being Elected as Fellows to different organizations (American Physical Society; Royal Society of Chemistry, U.K.; Institute of Physics, U.K.; Institution of Engineering Technology; Linnean Society of London, U.K., International Association of Advanced Materials), (b) Top 2% scientists in the Stanford University list (years: 2021, 2022, 2023), (c) AES Electrophoetic Society Mid-Career Acheivement Award, (d) Pioneering Investigator of ChemComm journal, (e) Soft Matter Emerging Investigator, (f) Junior Faculty Outstanding Research Award of the Clark School, UMD, (g) Emerging Investigators of PCCP for several years, (h) multiple awards and recognitions from the University of Maryland, (i) IIT Kharagpur 2018 Young Alumni Achiever Award, (j) Hind Rattan Award, (k) Associate Editorship of Physics of Fluids, (l) Editorial Board membership of the journal Scientific Reports, and many more.

As of March 2026, Dr. Das has authored 212 journal publications, including publications in journals like Nature Materials, Science Advances, Advanced Materials, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Nature Communications, Physical Review Letters, ACS Nano, Macromolecules, Applied Physics Letters, Advanced Functional Materials, Advanced Energy Materials, Matter, Nucleic Acids Research, Physical Review E, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Physics of Fluids, Langmuir, Soft Matter, Journal of Chemical Physics, Journal of Applied Physics, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, Chemical Communications, ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, Journal of Physical Chemistry B/C, Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, and Scientific Reports.

Also, as of March 2026, Dr. Das has mentored/mentoring as many as 35 graduate students (MS and PhD students) and postdocs and has received (as PI and co-PI) research grants of more than $11.5 million (personal share ~$7 million) from agencies such as NSF, DOE, DoW, NASA, NextFlex, etc. 

HONORS AND AWARDS

• AES Eelctrophoreis Society Mid-Career Achievement Award
• Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in the Division of Polymer Physics (Citation: For fundamental discoveries of the properties of polyelectrolyte brushes, brush-supported water molecules and counterions, and liquid transport in nanochannels grafted with polyelectrolyte brushes, by pioneering the use of all-atom molecular dynamics simulations and machine learning to such systems.) (2025)
• Associate Editor of the journal Physics of Fluids (October, 2025 onwards)
• Included in the Stanford University’s list of world’s top 2% scientists based on the citations for the entire career. The overall rank is 103,048 (with self-citations) and 134,604 (without self-citations). In terms of sub-category, in the category of Chemical Physics, my rank is 2053 (with self-citations) and 2444 (without self-citations). 
• Included in the Stanford University’s list of world’s top 2% scientists based on the citations for the year 2024. The overall rank is 52,352 (with self-citations) and 62,483 (without self-citations). In terms of sub-category, in the category of Chemical Physics, my rank is 701 (with self-citations) and 791 (without self-citations). 
• Elected Lifetime Fellowship of the International Association of Advanced Materials, Sweden for “Computational Modeling & Machine Learning in Soft Materials" (2025)
• Elected Fellow, Linnean Society of London, U.K. (2025).
• Included in the Stanford University list of world’s top 2% scientists based on the citations for the year 2023 [The rank is 86,554 (without self-citations) and 90,618 (with self-citations). The rank is 1101 among 106,831 researchers in the sub-field of Chemical Physics (2024).
• Included in the Stanford University list of world’s top 2% scientists based on the citations for the year 2022 [The rank is 63,032 (with self-citations) and 68,951 (without self-citations). The rank is 878 among 100,804 researchers in the sub-field of Chemical Physics (2023).
• Recognized as Pioneering Investigator by ChemComm journal. Invited to submit an article for ChemComm Pionnering Investigators Collection 2023. (2023). Link to the CVs of the recipients: https://doi.org/10.1039/D4CC90213K
• Invited to Contribute to the Special Issue “The Future of Lab-on-a-chip-Devices: An Early Career Scientists’ Perspective” of Frontiers in Sensors journal (2023).
• Appointed as the Editorial Advisory Board Member of the journal Physics of Fluids (2023)
• Included in the Stanford University list of world’s top 2% scientists based on the citations for the year 2021 [The rank is 67,534 (with self-citations) and 82,069 (without self-citations). The rank is 938 among 90,869 researchers in the sub-field of Chemical Physics.] (2022)
• Recognized with six journal papers being identified by the Web of Science as ESI highly cited papers in the last 5 years (2022). 
• Fellow, Institution of Engineering and Technology, U.K. (2022)
• Recognized as a Soft Matter Emerging Investigator (this recognition is associated with the invitation to submit a paper for the  Emerging Investigator collections of the Soft Matter journal) (2022)
• 2021 Junior Faculty Outstanding Research Award of the A. James Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland (2021)
• Included in the Stanford University list of world's top 2% scientists based on the citations for the year 2020. The rank is 46,179 overall and 777 in the sub-field of Chemical Physics (2021). 
• VEBLEO Fellow (2021)
• Selected for invitation to the 2021 Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics Emerging Investigators Themed Issue (2021)
• Fellow, Institute of Physics, U.K. (2021) (News about this award: ENME Website; Clark School Website)
• Selected in UMD Research Leaders Fellows Program (2020) (News about this award: MarylandToday)
• Honoree at University of Maryland’s Maryland Research Excellence Celebration (2020)
• Selected for invitation to the inaugural Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics Emerging Investigators Themed Issue (2019)
• Fellow, Royal Society of Chemistry (2019) (News about this award: ENME Website)
• Honoree at University of Maryland’s Inaugural Maryland Research Excellence Celebration (2019)
• Hind Rattan Award (Hindi Phrase when translated to English means “Jewel of India”) by NRI Welfare Society of India (Prof. Das has been selected to receive the award in a function in Bangalore, India on January 9, 2019 for his “Outstanding services, contributions and achievements” in his professional field. This award is one of the highest Indian diasporic awards granted annually to non-resident persons of Indian origin (NRIs)) (2019)
• Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IITKGP) Young Alumni Achiever Awards 2018 (These awards started by IITKGP in 2018 “recognize alumni age 40 or younger who have demonstrated emerging and unique innovation, creativity and success in his or her chosen career.”) (2018)
• Selection as Editorial Board Member of Scientific Reports (a journal of the Nature Publishing Group) (2017)
• Recognized as the Outstanding Reviewer for the journal International Journal of Non-linear Mechanics (2015)
• Honoree in 8^th Annual University-Wide Celebration of Scholarship and Research (University of Maryland, College Park) (2015)
• Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship (2011-2012)
• Emerald Engineering Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards
• High Value Ph.D. Fellowship, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur
• National Doctoral Fellowship, All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE)
• Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) Innovative Students Project Award (Undergraduate Level)
• S.P. Sengupta Memorial Award, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, India

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS

• Editorial Board, Nature Scientific Reports, Fluids and Plasma Physics
• Americal Physical Society (APS)
• Royal Society of Chemistry, U.K.
• Materials Research Society
• Institute of Physics, U.K.
• Linnean Society, Lonodon