Nairiti Sinha

Dr. Nairiti Sinha completed her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering under the advisement of Prof. Darrin Pochan at the University of Delaware in 2020. As a graduate student, she was also affiliated with NIST Center for Neutron Research (NCNR) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, Maryland. She pursued her postdoctoral research at the Materials Research Laboratory (MRSEC at the University of California, Santa Barbara) with Prof. Matthew Helgeson and Prof. Craig Hawker. Dr. Sinha is an incoming tenure-track assistant professor at Penn State University in the department of Materials Science and Engineering starting in Fall 2023. As part of her doctoral thesis, Dr. Sinha investigated the sequence design, solution behavior, dynamics and self-assembly of synthetic peptides called bundlemers. She has published in world renowned journals like Nature, received the ACS POLY/PMSE Excellence in Graduate Research Award in 2020 for her PhD research and has delivered multiple invited talks on her Ph.D. work. Her postdoctoral work investigated molecular design-driven structure-property relationships in materials such as coacervates, hydrogels and biological nanocomposites. Her manuscript that elucidates the balance of interactions in coacervating mixtures of homochiral peptides has been selected as ACS Editor’s Choice in July 2023. Dr. Sinha was also selected for the Rising Stars in Soft and Biological Matter Symposium 2022 for her postdoctoral research.

This faculty member is associated with the Penn State Intercollege Graduate Degree Program (IGDP) in Materials Science and Engineering (MatSE) where a multitude of perspectives and cross-disciplinary collaboration within research is highly valued. Graduate students in the IGDP in MatSE may work with faculty members from across Penn State.