|
Professor Siddhartha Das, a member of the University of Maryland's (UMD) mechanical engineering faculty, has been elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, which in 1858 published Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace’s original paper on evolution.
Founded in 1788, it is the world’s oldest learned society devoted to natural history and the natural sciences. It continues to promote scientific knowledge through grants, professional recognition, and educational programs.
Its selection of Das as a Fellow highlights the growing interdisciplinarity among science and engineering fields—a trend which is exemplified by the UMD researcher’s work.
“I was elected Fellow on the basis of my research on polymers and generic biological soft matter,” he said. “Even though I’m first and foremost an engineer, my work is interdisciplinary by nature and connects me to the fields that the Society is best known for.”
A member of the UMD faculty since 2014, Das has received international acclaim for his pioneering use of molecular dynamics simulations to study phenomena occurring at a scale too small to be observed directly.
Much of his current work is concerned with toothbrush-like chains of polymers or polyelectrolytes that can be used to "functionalize" surfaces—that is, apply them to some use. Applications include sensing, diagnostics, current rectification, surface wettability modification, drug delivery, and oil recovery.
He has published more than 200 journal papers, including papers in Nature Materials, Science Advances, PNAS, ACS Nano, Advanced Materials, Matter, Nature Communications, Macromolecules, and Soft Matter. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and also of the Royal Society of Chemistry, which publishes Chemical Communications.
In July 2022, Das was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Engineering Technology, based in the United Kingdom, and in 2023 he joined the editorial board of Physics of Fluids.
May 13, 2025
|
