Devleena Samanta

Devleena Samanta is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry, an Associate Member of the Livestrong Cancer Institutes, and a member of the Texas Materials Institute at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin). Her research centers on developing nanoscale tools to sense and control biocatalytic activity. She is the first UT Austin faculty member to receive the prestigious Packard Fellowship in the chemistry category, and her contributions have been recognized with numerous honors, including a Cottrell Scholarship, Scialog Fellowship, the Outstanding Researcher Award from the International Institute for Nanotechnology (IIN), and selection as a Hanna Gray Fellow Finalist by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In addition to her research, Devleena is a dedicated teacher and mentor. She has received two teaching awards at UT Austin, as well as the Outstanding Mentor Award from the IIN. For her contributions to UT Austin, she was appointed the William H. Tonn Endowed Professorial Fellow for the 2024-2025 academic year. She also serves on the Early Career Advisory Board of the Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology, a diamond open access journal.

Devleena earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Stanford University in 2017 under the mentorship of Professor Richard N. Zare. She was supported by a Winston Chen Stanford Graduate Fellowship and a Center for Molecular Analysis and Design Fellowship. She then trained with Professor Chad A. Mirkin at Northwestern University as an IIN Postdoctoral Fellow.

A major challenge in chemistry and biology is the ability to identify biomolecules, such as enzymes, in their functionally active state and to deliberately control their behavior, particularly in complex environments.

Sensing biomolecular activity, rather than simply measuring concentration, is essential for understanding biological processes and for early disease diagnosis. Our work focuses on developing nanoscale technologies that can enable activity-based sensing. These approaches can directly report on enzymatic function, enabling quantitative measurements for the early detection of diseases such as cancer.

Programming biomolecular function requires tools that can actively modulate activity with precision. Small-molecule drugs and protein regulators typically act through single binding sites or fixed interfaces, which limits control over spatial organization and local chemical environment. In contrast, nanoscale systems are often comparable in size to biomolecules and can be engineered to engage enzymes and proteins through multiple, spatially defined interactions simultaneously. This enables control over enzyme orientation, local concentration, and microenvironment in ways that are difficult to achieve with small molecules or proteins alone.

By integrating biological building blocks – DNA, peptides, and proteins – with synthetic nanomaterials, our lab develops hybrid systems that both sense biomolecular activity and program biomolecular function. Our work aims to establish design principles at the nano–bio interface to enable applications in biosensing, biocatalytic synthesis, synthetic biology, and therapeutic biomolecular systems.