Ananya Chakravarti is a chemical engineer and biophysicist, with expertise spanning polymer physics, soft materials, molecular simulations, and computational modeling. Her research focuses on elucidating the molecular underpinnings of protein behavior— particularly predicting how environmental stressors affect living systems, with implications for disease and aging, climate adaptation, and design of stimuli-responsive biomaterials.

She is currently a Princeton Social Impact Fellow at XPRIZE in the Food, Water, and Waste domain, where she contributes to building the domain’s roadmap, identifying grand challenges, and shaping analysis of key opportunity areas. Dedicated to advancing STEM education, outreach, and diversity, she has led and developed initiatives for women and underrepresented groups in STEM through Prison Teaching Initiative, Women in STEM leadership, and research programs for high school and undergraduate students in Chicago, Trenton, and across the nation. She currently serves in governance roles on national committees, including the American Chemical Society’s Project SEED and the Biophysical Society’s Education Committee.

Ananya is a recipient of the Princeton Energy and Climate Scholarship, the McGraw Teaching Fellowship, the Elkins Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and the Richard Tillman Award for Excellence in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. She also plays an active role in university governance as an elected officer in Princeton’s Graduate Student Government and department ambassador, advising both the engineering administration and broader university leadership. She holds a B.S. with honors from The University of Chicago in Molecular Engineering, with minors in Computational Engineering and Linguistics, and is currently pursuing a joint Ph.D. in Chemical and Biological Engineering and Materials Science at Princeton University. Additionally, she has earned certificates from Princeton in Sustainability and the Ethics of AI and is completing the university’s Teaching Transcript Program.