Mitra Dutta, a distinguished professor in the electrical and computer engineering department at the University of Illinois Chicago, leads the Nanoengineering Research Laboratory.

Dutta earned her PhD from the University of Cincinnati in 1981 and held postdoctoral appointments at Purdue University (1981-1983) and the City College of New York (1983-1986). She then was a visiting researcher at Brookhaven National Laboratory from 1984 to 1986. Dr. Dutta joined the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, then called the Electronics Technology and Devices Laboratory, as team leader of the Optoelectronics Team and rose to become branch chief and, finally, division director of the Physics Division, where she supervised and managed a large group of scientists and engineers. In 1996, Dr. Dutta moved to the U.S. Army Research Office, where, after a short time as a program manager for quantum electronics, she ran the Electronics Division. In 1999, she was promoted to the Senior Executive Service as director of the Research Technology and Integration Directorate, with oversight over the $310 million Army Research Office budget.

Dr. Dutta has held adjunct professor positions at Rutgers University, the University of Maryland, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has authored or co-authored more than 400 publications and presentations, holds 31 U.S. and Canadian patents, has co-edited five books, and is a co-author on a sixth. She served on the Army Science and Technology committee for Homeland Security and coauthored the NRC Reports 1 and 2 for the Board for Army Science and Technology.

• Ryan Ahern
• Dimitri Alexson (2006)
• Sushmita Biswas
• Hye-Son Jung
• Ayan Kar
• Yang Li (2007)
• Jianyong Yang (2008)