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. 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. 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 identifying biomolecules, such as enzymes, in their functionally active states and deliberately controlling their behavior, particularly in complex environments.

The group's research focuses on developing nanoscale technologies that enable activity-based sensing of biomolecules. By measuring biomolecular activity rather than concentration alone, these approaches provide insight into biological processes and support the early detection of diseases such as cancer. The technologies developed by the group can directly report on enzymatic function and enable quantitative measurements of biomolecular activity.

The group also develops tools to program biomolecular function with precision. Traditional small-molecule drugs and protein regulators typically act through single binding sites or fixed interfaces, limiting control over spatial organization and local chemical environments. In contrast, nanoscale systems can be engineered to engage enzymes and proteins through multiple spatially defined interactions simultaneously. This approach enables control over enzyme orientation, local concentration and microenvironment in ways that are difficult to achieve using small molecules or proteins alone.

By integrating biological building blocks, including DNA, peptides and proteins, with synthetic nanomaterials, the laboratory develops hybrid systems that both sense biomolecular activity and program biomolecular function. The group's work seeks to establish design principles at the nano-bio interface and enable applications in biosensing, biocatalytic synthesis, synthetic biology and therapeutic biomolecular systems.