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Moumita Das is a theoretical physicist and Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Her research is in the area of biophysics, with a focus in cellular mechanics and filamentous networks. Since 2016, Das has also been a program faculty in the Mathematical Modeling PhD Program in the School of Mathematical Sciences. Das is a member of the American Physical Society (APS) and the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB). She is a visiting scholar at UCLA and a Biohub Distinguished Visiting Scientist at the Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub in San Francisco, CA.

Academic career
Das received her Ph.D. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 2005. She worked with Sriram Ramaswamy and her thesis research focused on the structure and rheology of confined complex fluids. Before joining RIT in 2012 as an assistant professor of Physics, she was a VENI fellow at Vrije Universiteit under the supervision of Fred MacKintosh, and postdoctoral fellow at Harvard and UCLA.

Das was a member-at-large in the APS Division of Biological Physics (DBIO) between 2019 and 2022, and has served on multiple committees. She represented the state of New York on behalf of APS during the APS Congressional Visits Day in 2021 and 2022, where she was part of a group that lobbied Congress for increased funding for research and education, environmental issues, and issues affecting international Ph.D. students and women scholars. She is a research mentor in the RIT McNair and LSAMP Programs for low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented minority students who pursue doctoral degrees and go on to careers in academia.

Research contributions
Das has broad interests in the mechanics of filamentous networks, particularly those found in cellular systems such as actin and microtubules. She has been recognized for her work on the effective medium theory of networks, rigidity in filaments and elastic networks , and the dynamics and self-assembly of cytoskeleton composites.

According to Google Scholar, Das' publications have received over 1,000 citations and her h-index is 18.

Awards and honors
Durian has received a significant number of awards and honors which include:


 * Norman A. Miles Award for Excellence in Teaching, RIT (2022)
 * Cottrell College Science Award (2015)
 * Scialog Fellow (2015)
 * VENI Fellowship (2008)