Surajit Sen

Welcome to my personally maintained webpage. Feel free to check out my footprints. If you wish to reach me, please do so by using the e-mail button near the end of this page.

About me -

I hold a B.Sc (Hons) from Presidency College (1982), Calcutta and a PhD from The University of Georgia (1990). I did postdoctoral work at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis and Michigan State University before joining the physics faculty at the State University of New York at Buffalo in tenure track capacity in 1994. I have been a full professor since 2006.

My research interests in physics -

My research is on nonequilibrium processes and nonlinear dynamical systems as realized in nature and in social contexts. These works include studies on interactions between solitary waves, the likely existence of a new equilibrium-like state with large scale fluctuations, impulse acoustics based imaging of buried landmines, impact mitigation and sound dampening using granular metamaterials and studies of battle strategy and primate societies. I enjoy working on granular materials and on discrete nonlinear many body systems such as the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou systems (see the google scholar link below for papers). One important area of work has been on infrasound amplification.

In the past two decades, my research interests have broadened to the study of social systems. We have been working on epidemic spread on regional scales, land based warfare, animal societies, elections, social and ecological sustainability issues.

My other love -

I am deeply interested in raising awareness about science and math in children and youth from the underserved communities. In recent years I have been involved in small-scale experimental work to determine which approaches may be appropriate to educate the nearly 3 billion youth of the developing world.

I gave a Distinguished Lecture at the National Academy of Sciences titled, "Can we empower the 3 billion youth of the developing world?" on June 15, 2021 at 11am EDT.  The lecture is here.

My work -

The work I have done has appeared in some 170 refereed journal articles and discussed in about as many invited lectures in conferences, academic institutions, and government labs in the US and around the world. I am fortunate to be a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and of the American Association of the Advancement of Science. I have been a Fulbright-Nehru Fellow at the Indian Institute of Engineering, Science and Technology in 2017-2018 and a Jefferson Science Fellow at the National Academy of Sciences as well as a Senior Science Advisor at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

My service -

I am an Editor of the journal Granular Matter and an Editorial Board Member of journals Modern Physics Letters B and International Journal of Modern Physics B. I was recently appointed a Review Editor of Frontiers in Physics. I also am an Advisory Editorial Board member of Physica A.

My university service includes chairing the promotion and tenure process in arts and sciences at Buffalo, being involved in human rights of scientists through the APS and in playing a key role in structuring bi-national science collaboration programs between individual academics. I am a past two-term president of the American Chapter of the Indian Physics Association and a former member of the executive committee of the Forum on International Physics of the APS. I have served in the Beller and Marshak Prize Committees and the Sakharov Prize committee of the APS.

Honors 

• Selected for the Jefferson Science Fellowship of the National Academy of Sciences, January 2020.  

• Hind Rattan Award of the NRI Welfare Society of India, Bangkok, Thailand, January 8, 2018 (unable to attend in person)
  Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellow, Indian Institute of Engineering, Science and Technology, Shibpur, West Bengal, India 2017-2018.

•  Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Citation: For pioneering research on solitary waves and their collisions in granular media and for sustained outstanding service and leadership in international physics 2012

• Named by Dean Maureen Grasso of the Graduate School, The University of Georgia, as a UGA graduate degree holder who exemplifies the intellectual legacy of our university 2009

• Fellow, American Physical Society, Citation: For the discovery of how solitary waves break and secondary solitary waves form in granular media, for his leadership in organizing forums to represent and recognize the physicists from India and for raising consciousness about the problems and the importance of rural science education in India and the developing world 2008

• Theoretical Physics Seminar Circuit (TPSC) Lecturer at Benares Hindu University, December, 2007

• SUNY Chancellor’s First Patent Award (Albany, NY). To recognize work on developing an acoustic impulse based approach to detecting buried anti-personnel landmines in war inflicted regions of the world. 2003

• Nominated for the Inventor of the Year Award by Niagara Frontier Intellectual Property Law Association and Technical Societies Council of the Niagara Frontier, 2003

• Named one of the top 100 innovators of Western New York (Invited to Upstate Alliance for Innovation), 2001
  National Scholarship, Government of India, 1977 & 1979

Visiting Professorships

• Distinguished Visiting Professor, Bioscience & Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur, India (1/2023 -8/2023) & Lead Campus-wide Future Cities Project Team

• Visiting Professor of Physics, Indian Institute of Engineering, Science and Technology, Howrah, India (2017-2018)

• Adjunct Professor of Physics, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada (2014-2019)

• AdjunctProfessorofMathematics,StateUniversityofNewYorkCollegeatBuffalo (2009-2012)

• Invited Visiting Professor, Universidade de Santiago de Chile (12/2003)

Get in touch at sen@buffalo.edu

A Little More 

My google scholar page (not terribly updated)

The Statistical and Nonlinear Physics Lecture Series

My recent lectures -

• Steel Lecture at IIT Bombay, 2017

• Interview with John and Matt (Podcast), 2019

• PBS Stem Spots Interview with Prof David Cornelison, 2019

• Talk on Curiosity and Physics, 2021