In this series, ChEnected introduces readers to the recipients of AIChE’s 2025 Institute and Board of Directors’ Awards. These high honorees are nominated by the chemical engineering community and voted upon by the members of AIChE’s Awards Committee.
The Alpha Chi Sigma Award recognizes outstanding accomplishments in fundamental or applied chemical engineering research, and is sponsored by the Alpha Chi Sigma Educational Foundation and the Alpha Chi Sigma Fraternity.
About Arup Chakraborty
The recipient of the 2025 Alpha Chi Sigma Award is Arup K. Chakraborty, John M. Deutch Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is being recognized “for significantly advancing immunology by integrating theory, computation, and experimental studies, leading to breakthroughs in vaccine design and immune system elucidation.”
Chakraborty’s work for nearly 25 years has been dedicated to integrating biology and theory/computation rooted in physics and engineering. Working with collaborators, he has led a major new thrust in immunology that elegantly pairs theory/computation with experimental and clinical immunology. This work has resulted in significant advances in basic immunology and infectious disease research. In fact, the paradigm of computational immunology inspired by his work has broadly impacted the basic sciences, engineering, and medicine, by allowing a new understanding of fundamental immune system mechanisms.
Chakraborty’s interests span T cell signaling, development of the T cell repertoire, a mechanistic understanding of virus evolution, and antibody responses. Since 2016, Chakraborty has also been interested in the role of phase separation in gene regulation.
Dr. Chakraborty is one of fewer than 30 individuals who are members of all three branches of the US National Academies. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and has received many other honors, including the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, the E. O. Lawrence Medal (DOE), a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Max Delbruck Prize in Biological Physics from the American Physical Society. AIChE has previously honored him with the Colburn, Professional Progress, and Prausnitz Awards.
This fall, ChEnected is presenting a series that profiles all the 2025 Institute and Board of Directors’ Award recipients. Visit ChEnected regularly to meet the honorees.
