Saroj Upreti

The University of Southern Mississippi

Ph.D. Candidate, Polymer Science & Engineering

William Carey University

B.S., Mathematics and Chemistry

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

ALS Doctoral Fellow

• Developing a data-driven, high-throughput approach to battery electrolyte material design.
• Engineering a self-driving lab that couples copolymer processing robots to AI-assisted property optimization.
• Integrating automated GISAXS data reduction with Gaussian-process Bayesian optimization at ALS beamline 7.3.3.

The University of Southern Mississippi

Graduate Research Assistant

• Built an automated, high-throughput X-ray scattering pipeline for resolving block copolymer thin-film morphology.
• Led development of polymer processing robots that fabricate hundreds of thin-film samples in hours.
• Co-deployed a self-driving lab pairing those robots with machine-learning optimization models.

William Carey University

Undergraduate Research Assistant

• Designed an artificial neural network to predict atomization energies of inorganic compounds.
• Modeled hybrid local/random network topologies for connectivity advantages in graph dynamics.

ALS Doctoral Fellowship in Residence

Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Best Poster Award

ACS Spring Meeting, Atlanta, GA

William Carey University Scholar Award

Advanced Light Source — Beamline 7.3.3

SAXS / WAXS / GISAXS · Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

• Commissioned autonomous experimentation capability at the SAXS/WAXS endstation.
• Integrated real-time GISAXS reduction with a gpCAM Bayesian optimization loop.

Campaigns: April 2024 · October 2024 · May 2025 · September 2025 · October 2025

National Synchrotron Light Source II — Beamline 11-BM (Complex Materials Scattering)

SAXS / WAXS / RSoXS · Brookhaven National Laboratory

• Wrote and served as experiment lead on multiple approved proposals, including data-driven optimization of copolymer-based membrane morphology.
• High-throughput scattering of robotically fabricated thin-film libraries.

Campaigns: July 2024 · November 2024 · March 2025 · June 2025 · November 2025

PosterData-driven high-throughput approach for morphology optimization of block copolymer films

ACS Spring Meeting 2026, Atlanta, GA

OralData-driven approach to optimize the morphology of block copolymer films

MRS Spring Meeting & Exhibit 2025, Seattle, WA

Organizing Team

Gulf Coast Polymer Conference 2024, University of Southern Mississippi

President

Nepalese Student Association, University of Southern Mississippi

President

International Students' Organization, William Carey University