Sujit Datta: Life in a Tight Spot (and How to Get Out of One)

About this event

Microbes in nature inhabit complex, crowded environments—soils, sediments, and biological gels—yet lab studies typically examine cells in bulk liquid. How do environmental complexities shape microbial behavior, from single cells to large collectives? In this talk, I will describe my group's work addressing this question using tools from soft matter and biological physics that enable us to visualize microbes across scales and 3D-print microbial collectives in habitats mimicking natural ones. We have found that environmental factors reshape microbial life in unexpected ways: for example, as they proliferate, nonmotile bacteria assemble into elongated strings through interactions with surrounding macromolecules, form branched colonies in response to nutrient heterogeneities, and disperse over long distances using fermentation-driven bubbles. Our work reveals how microbes in tight spots harness physical, chemical, and metabolic cues to organize and disperse, establishing new principles for living active matter in complex environments.

Bio: Sujit Datta is Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering, and Biophysics at Caltech, where his group integrates experiment, theory, and computation to study transport processes of complex fluids, gels, and microbes in complex environments. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Reviews of Modern Physics . His scholarship has been recognized by awards from a range of different communities, including the Allan P. Colburn and 35 Under 35 Awards of the AIChE, three awards from the APS (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 ACS, Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, NSF CAREER Award, and Soft Matter Lectureship of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He received his undergraduate degrees in Physics and Mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, his PhD in Physics from Harvard, and postdoctoral training at Caltech. Prior to moving to Caltech, Sujit was Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies of Chemical & Biological Engineering at Princeton University.