surita bhatia

Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Community
Professor, Department of Chemistry

Surita Bhatia is a professor of Chemistry, affiliate professor of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering, and director of the NSF NRT PhD training grant on Quantitative Analysis of Materials. She has previously served as Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs for Stony Brook University (SBU), interim chair of the Department of Anthropology, and vice chair of the Department of Chemistry.

Surita 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 (CNRS) Complex Fluids Laboratory.  She has worked in public higher education for more than two decades, first at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she was a professor of chemical engineering, adjunct professor of polymer science and engineering, associate director of the Institute for Cellular Engineering, and in the leadership of the NSF-funded Center for Hierarchical Manufacturing.

In 2012, she moved to a joint position as a staff scientist at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials at Brookhaven National Laboratory and a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry. 

Surita’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 $16.5 million from NSF, NIH, the Department of Energy, philanthropic foundations, and private industry. Surita is a fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), a fellow of the Society of Rheology, and a member of the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). She is the recipient of an NSF CAREER Award, a Dupont Young Professor Award, a 3M Corporation Non-Tenured Faculty Award, and was one of 21 honorees nationwide for the 2018 AIChE Women in Chemical Engineering Award for Outstanding Contributions to Chemical Engineering. 

Surita also has strong interests in mentoring, education, and training. In this regard, she has served as PI on three NSF REU grants and joint-PI on NIH IMSD and NIH PREP programs, and she is a recipient of the national AIChE WIC Mentorship Excellence Award. Surita has been recognized at the national level for this work; she was an invited participant at the 2009 National Academy of Engineering “Frontiers of Engineering Education” Symposium and at the 2011 NSF/American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Workshop on training in nanoscience.  View more information about her research and interests. 

Email: surita.bhatia@stonybrook.edu