Nakul Rampal, BIDMaP Fellow at UC Berkeley working on AI, chemistry, materials science, and self-driving labs

Nakul Rampal

BIDMaP Fellow
Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet
University of California, Berkeley
Email: nakul.rampal [at] berkeley [dot] edu
Office: 373 Cory Hall Berkeley, CA 94720-1770

Current Research Interests:
I work at the intersection of AI and chemistry, developing LLMs, AI agents, agent harnesses, alignment methods, datasets, benchmarks, and evaluation frameworks for scientific discovery. I also have experience building self-driving labs, where automated synthesis and characterization are integrated with AI systems that interact with the physical world.

Latest updates
6/24
NEW Preprint led by Dhruv Menon on developing a chemical language model for generating reticular materials posted. arXiv GitHub
6/11
NEW Nakul gave a talk and served on a panel at the IOM3 Machine Learning for Carbon Capture & Battery Discovery event. IOM3
4/16
Nakul gave a BIDMaP seminar on reticular materials, applications, and the future with AI. BIDMaP YouTube
To view this page in a different language, please select here:

Bio

I am currently a BIDMaP Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, advised by Omar Yaghi, Jennifer Chayes, and Christian Borgs. I work at the intersection of AI and chemistry, developing LLMs, AI agents, agent harnesses, alignment methods, datasets, benchmarks, and evaluation frameworks for scientific discovery, with experience building self-driving labs (automated synthesis + characterization) that integrate AI with the physical world. I am particularly interested in applying these tools to reticular chemistry, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), covalent organic frameworks (COFs), and porous materials discovery. I completed my PhD in the Department of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge, where I was fortunate to be advised by David Fairen-Jimenez. Prior to Cambridge, I completed my MS at the University of California, Berkeley, where I was fortunate to be advised by Berend Smit. Prior to that, I did my undergraduate research at IIT Bombay, where I was fortunate to be advised by Ateeque Malani. I completed my undergraduate degree at Manipal Institute of Technology.

Here's a video explaining the research I do:



Here is a video explaining the background of our new paper on the reproducibility of surface areas calculated using the BET equation, published in Advanced Materials:

Preprints

(Note: § denotes equal contribution, * denotes corresponding author)

Publications

(Note: § denotes equal contribution, * denotes corresponding author)

Talks

Awards

Teaching

Mentoring

Flag Counter

LLM usage statement: I use Codex to maintain and update this website.

Last update: 26th June, 2026. Template adapted (with permission) from Huacheng Yu's.