PI: Progna Banerjee, Ph.D.

Progna Banerjee, Ph.D. is a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry at Loyola University Chicago (since 2024), where she leads the PBEnergyLab. Recognized as a 2026 Materials Au Rising Star, her research pioneers closed-loop robotics integrated with advanced electron microscopy and electrochemistry. Her group develops autonomous pipelines for the synthesis of metastable phases in nanostructured materials, specifically designed to engineer next-generation solid electrolytes and superionic conductors for high-performance batteries, fuel cells, and catalytic systems.
Prior to Loyola, Banerjee was a NST Center postdoctoral appointee at The Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM) at Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois, USA (2021–2024), where she developed electron microscopy–driven approaches to map ionic transport and nanoscale phase transitions in energy materials. She previously held two prestigious fellowships: the NSF MRSEC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas, USA (2020–2021), where she studied light–matter interactions in bioinspired nanostructures as part of a DoD MURI; and the EBI–Shell ALS Postdoctoral Fellowship at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California, USA (2019–2020), where she studied PLD based thin-film solid-state batteries.
Banerjee earned her Ph.D. in Physics (with a focus on Materials Chemistry, 2018) and M.S. in Condensed Matter Physics (2014) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA. She also holds an M.Tech. in Solid State Technology and an M.Sc. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.
Her work has appeared in leading journals including Nano Letters, Nature Communications, Chemistry of Materials, and Angewandte Chemie. She leads a high-throughput, machine-learning-enabled discovery pipeline for complex ionic materials.

FELLOWSHIPS, HONORS AND AWARDS

Since independent Principal Investigator
2026 – Selected as a 2026 Rising Star in Materials Science by ACS Materials Au: Invited contribution to the Rising Stars collection (in preparation)
2025 – Research Support Grant Competition Award, Office of Research Services – Advanced Structural and Compositional Characterization of Colloidal Copper Boron Selenide Nanocrystals for Superionic Conductors

Post-Ph.D.
2022 – American Chemical Society–CAS Future Leader (1 of 30 awardees worldwide, across all chemistry disciplines)
2021–2024 – Postdoctoral Appointee, Center for Nanoscale Materials (Argonne National Laboratory; 1 of 8 postdocs selected annually)
2021 – ACS Postdoc-to-Faculty Future Faculty Scholar
2020–2021 – Postdoctoral Fellow, NSF MRSEC, University of Texas at Austin
2019–2020 – EBI–Shell ALS Affiliated Postdoctoral Fellow, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

During Ph.D. (University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign) M.Tech, M.Sc, and Early Career
2018 – Scott Anderson Outstanding Graduate Assistant Award, Department of Physics
2017 – University Graduate Fellowship & Travel Grant, Graduate College
2017 – AVS Prairie Chapter Symposium Registration Award
2010–2012 – Government of India MRHM Institute Fellowship, IIT Kharagpur
2011 – SIPIS Summer Fellowship, National University of Singapore (10 awards granted annually)
2010 – Indian Academy of Sciences Summer Research Fellowship
2009 – Summer Research Fellowship, S.N. Bose Centre for Basic Sciences, Kolkata
2010 – Top 1 percentile in GATE National Exam (Physics, India) – nationwide graduate entrance examination
2008 – Top 1 percentile in JAM National Exam (Physics, India) – nationwide entrance for M.Sc. admission (thousands of candidates)
2005–2008 – First Rank in Department (Physics), highest GPA among all STEM students in college
2008 – Hiron Bala Memorial Gold Medal (Highest GPA in College, University award)

PBEnergyLab in motion

(L to R) Prof. Banerjee (invited talk: D03-1245: Mechanistic Insights into Quantum Dot Transformations for Enhancement in Ionic Conductivity in Solid Li-Ion Battery Electrolytes) and PBEnergyLab students (contributed poster) at the 248th Electrochemical Society conference (Oct 2025) and at the MateriAlZ Winter School (Jan 2026).

Recent student and postdoc recognitions

• 2025 Provost Fellowship Scholar (I.C. -project on data-driven correlation of morphology changes in lithiated colloidal superionics)
• 2025-2026 Mulcahy Fellowship (S.C. – project on calorimetric characterization of nanoscale superionic nanocrystals)
• 2025 Student Award from the American Institute of Chemists (AIC) (Y.X. -project on Cu–B–Se phase mapping)
• 2025 ACS postdoc to faculty workshop (O.S.)
• Participation in international conferences (248th electrochemical society-2025; 7th AIChE-American Institute of Chemical Engineers Battery and Energy Storage Conference-2025) and workshops (CCP4/APS School in Macromolecular Crystallography workshop-2025 and MateriAlZ Winter School-2026).

PBEnergyLab alumni – The PBEnergyLab maintains high-resolution training standards; listed alumni represent those who have made substantive contributions to our published AI-Nanoionics frameworks.

• Xu, Y. (2024-2025: MS student) Currently in Birmingham Medical School, co-author in peer-reviewed articles 22, 23
• Zervos, K. (2024-2025: MS student) Currently Materials Chemist at Molecular Interfaces, co-author in peer-reviewed articles 22, 23