Draft:Saad Bhamla

• File:Symbol opinion vote.svg Comment: Profiles by organizations the subject works in and works by the subject are not reliable sources Somepinkdude (talk) 20:03, 20 December 2025 (UTC)

• File:Symbol opinion vote.svg Comment: The Forbes source was written by a Forbes contributor, which means it is not considered a reliable source due to a lack of editorial control. MCE89 (talk) 15:58, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

---

Saad Bhamla
Alma mater	Indian Institute of Technology Madras (B.Tech.) Stanford University (Ph.D.; Postdoc)
Known for	research on droplet propulsion in insects; collective dynamics of worm “blobs”; low-cost scientific and medical instruments
Scientific career
Fields	Biophysics; Bioengineering; Chemical and biomolecular engineering
Institutions	Georgia Institute of Technology; University of Colorado Boulder (BioFrontiers Institute)
Website	bhamla.gatech.edu

Saad Bhamla is an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering whose work spans the physics of living systems and low-cost (“frugal”) health technologies. He is a 2024 Moore Inventor Fellow and a 2025 DARPA Young Faculty Awardee, and was selected to the 2025 Schmidt Polymaths cohort. His work on collective behavior in entangled worm “blobs” and on high-speed fluid ejection in insects has been covered by outlets including Scientific American and the National Science Foundation, and profiled by the U.S. National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

Education and career

Bhamla earned a B.Tech. in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Stanford University, where he later completed postdoctoral research in bioengineering. He joined the Georgia Tech faculty in 2017 and became associate professor in 2024. In 2025, the University of Colorado Boulder announced he would join the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and the BioFrontiers Institute in 2026.

Research

Bhamla’s group investigates ultrafast organismal motion and fluid dynamics across scales, including collective behavior in entangled worm “blobs” and high-speed excretion in insects; and develops inexpensive scientific and medical devices for low-resource settings (e.g., hand-powered centrifuges, microneedle electroporators, and low-cost hearing aids). Findings from his lab include demonstrations of Droplet Superpropulsion in sharpshooter insects, a unifying picture of fluidic excretion across species, and related media coverage.

Science communication and comics

Bhamla has also developed illustrated science-communication projects, including the comic series The Curious Zoo, which translates biological research into narrative form. The series has been covered by NPR, Chemistry World, and Hindustan Times.

Awards and honors

• Moore Inventor Fellow (2024).
• DARPA Young Faculty Award (2025).
• Newsweek (2023).
• Schmidt Polymath (2025).
• National Academies’ Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communication (2023).

Public engagement

Bhamla is a TED speaker and his work has been covered by outlets including The Verge and the Associated Press.

Selected publications

• E. J. Challita; S. Bhamla (2023). "Droplet superpropulsion in an energetically constrained insect." Nature Communications. 14:1138. doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36376-5.
• E. J. Challita; S. Bhamla (2024). "Unifying fluidic excretion across life from cicadas to elephants." PNAS. 121(12). doi:10.1073/pnas.2317878121.
• Y. Ozkan-Aydin; D. I. Goldman; S. Bhamla (2021). "Collective dynamics in entangled worm and robot blobs." PNAS. 118(20). doi:10.1073/pnas.2010542118.

See also

• Droplet Superpropulsion