The phrase "build upon previous" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use this phrase when you want to emphasize the idea of improving or progressing further from a prior point of reference. For example, "We must continue to build upon previous successes and strive for even greater advancements."
Dr. Raine said the findings build upon previous work indicating that the frontal lobe may be linked to antisocial behavior.
Lead researcher Dr Robert Schweitzer, of QUT's School of Psychology and Counseling, said that the findings build upon previous research "investigating the correlates of sexual functioning in women".
These views are held particularly strongly by northerners and by younger people and they build upon previous studies, such as the government's Citizenship Survey, which demonstrates that trust in local councils is almost twice as high as trust in parliament.
By their very nature, they build upon previous technologies and improve upon them.
We build upon previous work to provide a proof of concept for generic control of AMHSs in different domains.
We build upon previous work on small-scale consumer activity modeling and provide a novel approach for describing and predicting consumer response at the level of individual activities.
The headline-catching, but extremely high-risk, action builds upon previous efforts by undocumented individuals to put political pressure on Congress to effect comprehensive immigration reform, currently stalled in the House of Representatives.
The new research builds upon previous work in fruit flies, and demonstrates that, at least among insects, relatively tiny shifts in gene activity can have striking effects on behavior.
This work builds upon previous work by considering the proppant distribution in the fracture growth.
