Nachi Stern Email & Phone Number

Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

Leading the Learning Machines group, shared between the autonomous matter and information in matter research themes at AMOLF. My research efforts focus on the physics of learning in natural and synthetic systems. Such learning machines can adopt desirable properties and functions given real world examples and environments. Leveraging the advances of statistical learning theory in physical machines, physical learning is a promising bridge between computational machine learning and biology, and enables the development of new classes of bio-inspired smart metamaterials that adapt in-situ to users’ needs.

Greater Philadelphia Area

Postdoctoral fellow; joint appointment at the labs of Andrea Liu and Vijay Balasubramanian.- Research on analogies of machine learning algorithms in physical networks. Learning in simple systems like flow or spring networks provides exciting research directions to the discovery of fundamental facts about the nature of learning.- Research on curiosity in natural and artificial agents. What does curiosity mean in the context of reinforcement learning?

Hyde Park, Chicago

Research assistant in the soft condensed matter group (w/ Arvind Murugan).- Demonstrated user specified multi-stability in elastic networks by utilizing neuroscience inspired learning frameworks.- Developed a physical analog of machine learning in mechanics, allowing origami sheets to classify data and generalize to unseen examples.- Established design principles and learning rules for convenient deployment of self-folding origami under any folding scheme.- Shown the act of folding self-folding origami to be a glassy (NP-complexity) problem.- Explored the design of self-folding origami systems with soft folding modes at any energy scale.- Characterized shape spaces by application of successive membrane-like filters.- Developed and maintained codes for efficient simulation and optimization of energy landscapes due to arbitrary factor graphs (Python), design and folding of origami models (Matlab).Research assistant in fluid and nonlinear dynamics (w/ Wendy Zhang, Heinrich Jaeger):- Studied splashing and bouncing of suspension droplets; connected the different droplet behaviors to the balance of drag and momentum.- Developed and maintained MD simulation codes for the mechanics of suspension droplets (C language).Teaching responsibilities:- Led discussion sessions and laboratory sessions for undergraduate classical mechanics, - Graded coursework for graduate classical mechanics, electromagnetism, statistical mechanics and math methods.

Doctor Of Philosophy (Phd), Physics

Activities and Societies: Physics PhD programThesis title: "Design and learning in mechanical systems".

Boulder School For Condensed Matter Physics, Frustrated And Disordered Systems

Frustrated and disordered systems share universal features–such as rough free energy landscapes and rich sets of phase transitions–that.

Master Of Science (M.Sc.), Physics, 95/100

Activities and Societies: Research AssistantGraduated summa cum laude. Master thesis: "Isobaric simulation of a supercooled lattice.

Bachelor Of Science (B.Sc.), Physics, 87/100

Activities and Societies: Physics & Astronomy clubsGraduated magna cum laude. Extra classes taken in condensed matter physics.