Surita R. Bhatia, PhD, Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs and Professor, Department of Chemistry, has been named a fellow of the the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), the organization’s highest grade of membership, as well as a fellow of the Society of Rheology.
Surita R. Bhatia
“Surita’s commitment to excellence in science and engineering is apparent through the recognition she has received from such prestigious organizations as the AIChE and the Society of Rheology, as well as in her work every day,” said Nicole S. Sampson, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Distinguished Professor of Chemistry. “My deepest congratulations to Surita on these well-deserved honors!”
Recognition as an AIChE fellow reaffirms the high esteem with which colleagues and peers view distinctive professional achievements and accomplishments. Candidates for AIChE fellow are nominated by their peers, must have significant chemical engineering experience (generally 25 years), have demonstrated significant service to the profession, and have been a member of AIChE for at least 10 years.
Dr. Bhatia was recognized by the Society for Rheology for her contributions to the understanding of structure-properties relations through the application of USANS/USAXS spectroscopic techniques along with rheology to a wide spectrum of complex fluids including colloidal glasses, micellar polymer gels, polysaccharide hydrogels and soft biomaterials; and for her contributions to the understanding of dynamically arrested states and re-entrant behavior in colloidal systems.
Dr. Bhatia received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Delaware and her PhD from Princeton University, both in Chemical Engineering, followed by postdoctoral training at the Rhodia/Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Complex Fluids Laboratory. She has worked in public higher education for two decades, joining Stony Brook University in 2012 as a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry with a joint position as a staff scientist with the Center for Functional Nanomaterials at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Dr. Bhatia served as Vice Chair for Research and Facilities in the Department of Chemistry before her current role as Vice Provost of Faculty Affairs for the campus.
Dr. Bhatia’s research program focuses on structure, assembly and rheological properties of polymeric gels, soft biomaterials and nanoparticle dispersions. Exclusive of center grants, she has been PI or Co-PI on grants totaling $16 million from NSF, NIH, the Department of Energy, philanthropic foundations and private industry, including a recently awarded $3M NSF NRT training grant. She is the recipient of an NSF CAREER Award, a Dupont Young Professor Award, a 3M Corporation Non-Tenured Faculty Award, and a 2018 AIChE Women’s Initiatives Committee Award for Outstanding Contributions to Chemical Engineering. Earlier this year, Dr. Bhatia was inducted to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering College of Fellows.
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