Bio
Dr. Manjula Senanayake have been working at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), a Department of Energy Laboratory since 2020, as an post doctoral research associate at neutron scattering division. He received his Ph.D in Chemistry from the Clemson University in 2020 for his work on "Solvent as a Tool to Tune the Association of Structured Ionic Block Co-polymers" where he used both molecular dynamics simulation and neutron scattering techniques to probe the structure and the dynamics of complex block co-polymers. He worked with Prof. Dvora Perahia at Clemson university and Dr. Gary Grest at Sandia National Laboratory his Ph.D works. At the ORNL, he is pursuing research under the supervision of Hugh M O'Neill and Sai Venkatesh Pingali on solvent mediated interactions for plant cell wall deconstruction which is funded by the Department of Energy through the Biofuels Scientific Focus Area (SFA). His major role at ORNL is to perform small angle X-ray (SAXS) and small angle neuron (SANS) experiment on bio polymers and biomass and analyze SAXS and SANS data to understand the fundamental of solvent disruption of lignocellulosic biomass.