Nayanathara Hendeniya is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Rice University, working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as an Advanced Light Source Postdoctoral Fellow in Residence. She received her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Iowa State University in August 2026, where she worked with Dr. Boyce Chang studying solvent-mediated self-assembly and transport phenomena in functional block copolymer thin films for nanomanufacturing. Her doctoral research combined thin-film processing, synchrotron X-ray scattering, microscopy and theoretical analysis to understand how solvent transport, glass transition behavior, and non-equilibrium processing govern nanoscale morphology evolution and structure-property relationships. She had conducted her research in multiple DOE User Facilities. Currently, she is investigating the transport phenomena in ionomer thin-films using in-situ X-ray scattering methods. Nayanathara received her B.S. (Hons.) in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka and served as a Junior Lecturer prior to graduate studies.