Amad Zareei

I go by Amad; my earlier publications appear under the name Ahmad Zareei.

AI Research Scientist @Meta
previously Postdoc @Harvard, Ph.D. @Berkeley

Email: last_name at berkeley dot edu

I am currently Senior AI research scientist at Meta pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in computer vision for AR/VR applications using cutting-edge AI/ML techniques.

Prior to that, I was a postdoctoral fellow in Applied Mathematics in SEAS at Harvard University where I had the privilege of working alongside renowned researchers Drs. Katia Bertoldi and Ariel Amir on applications of AI in physics.

I received my Ph.D./M.Sc. in Engineering at UC Berkeley. I was advised by Professor M. Reza Alam.

I got my second M.A. in Applied Mathematics at Berkeley advised by Prof. Jon Wilkening. In my thesis, I found a transformation to map hydrodynamics Euler’s equations to the Schrödinger equation. I received my B.Sc. in Engineering and Physics (double major) from Sharif University of Technology.

You can find my mathematical genealogy in here. It was interesting to see Newton, Gauss, Laplace, Fourier, Euler, Hilbert, Bernoulli, Leibniz, Dirichelet in my genealogy tree. It’s truly fascinating to see the roots of my genealogy tree beginning with Nasir al-Din Tusi, a well-known Persian polymath from the 13th century.



Fluids simulations for incompressible, inviscid Navier-Stokes equation solved with black tracers;
initial velocity field is optimized using backpropagation such that the initial pattern of my first name "AHMAD"
transforms into the my last name "ZAREEI". The optimization is done using automatic
differentiation or backpropagation. You can find the code in my github.

highlights

Oct 2, 2026 New manuscript on arXiv: “Behavioral History Outperforms Descriptions of the Person for LLM Synthetic Personas”.
Mar 15, 2026 New manuscript on arXiv: “Air Drag Controls the Finite-Time Singularity of Euler’s Disk”.
Sep 18, 2025 Our paper “Reprogrammable sequencing for physically intelligent underactuated robots” is published in PNAS.
Sep 6, 2024 Our paper “Complex Deformation in Soft Cylindrical Structures via Programmable Sequential Instabilities” is published in Advanced Materials, and was selected for a cover feature in issue 46/2024.
Feb 9, 2024 Our paper is on “GNN-based physics solver for time-independent PDEs” is accepted for publication in Nature, Scientific Reports.
Mar 28, 2023 My first publication as corresponding author, “GNN-based physics solver for time-independent PDEs”, is now on arxiv.
Dec 22, 2022 New paper on cloaking waves got published in JFM.
Nov 18, 2022 I stand with citizens and brave women of Iran who are inspiring the world with their revolution. #WomenLifeFeedom
Sep 14, 2022 Our paper on Neural Accelerated Inverse Design got published in Advanced Materials, and also got on the front cover.
Jun 15, 2022 I will be attending CVPR 2022 in New Orleans next week. Hit me up if you’re around to meet.

selected publications

  1. arXiv
    Behavioral History Outperforms Descriptions of the Person for LLM Synthetic Personas
    Pourtaheri, Khashayar, and Zareei, Ahmad
    arXiv:2610.03998 2026
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  2. PNAS
    Reprogrammable sequencing for physically intelligent underactuated robots
    Kamp, Leon M, Zanaty, Mohamed, Zareei, Ahmad, Gorissen, Benjamin, Wood, Robert J, and Bertoldi, Katia
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2025
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  3. Sci. Rep.
    Mesh-based GNN surrogates for time-independent PDEs
    Gladstone, Rini Jasmine, Rahmani, Helia, Suryakumar, Vishvas, Meidani, Hadi, D’Elia, Marta, and Zareei, Ahmad
    Scientific Reports 2024
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  4. AFM
    Inverse Design of Mechanical Metamaterials with Target Nonlinear Response via a Neural Accelerated Evolution Strategy
    Deng, Bolei, Zareei, Ahmad, Ding, Xiaoxiao, Weaver, James C, Rycroft, Chris H, and Bertoldi, Katia
    Advanced Materials 2022
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  5. arXiv
    Learning time-dependent PDE solver using Message Passing Graph Neural Networks
    Pilva, Pourya, and Zareei, Ahmad
    arXiv:2204.07651 2022
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  6. PRL
    Temporal Evolution of Erosion in Pore Networks: From Homogenization to Instability
    Zareei, Ahmad, Pan, Deng, and Amir, Ariel
    Physical Review Letters 2022
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  7. AFM
    Inverse Design of Inflatable Soft Membranes Through Machine Learning
    Forte, Antonio Elia, Hanakata, Paul Z, Jin, Lishuai, Zari, Emilia, Zareei, Ahmad, Fernandes, Matheus C, Sumner, Laura, Alvarez, Jonathan, and Bertoldi, Katia
    Advanced Functional Materials 2022
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  8. PRL
    Harnessing mechanical deformation to reduce spherical aberration in soft lenses
    Zareei, Ahmad, Medina, Eder, and Bertoldi, Katia
    Physical Review Letters 2021
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  9. PNAS
    Harnessing transition waves to realize deployable structures
    Zareei, Ahmad, Deng, Bolei, and Bertoldi, Katia
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2020
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  10. JFM
    Cloaking in shallow-water waves via nonlinear medium transformation
    Zareei, Ahmad, and Alam, Mohammad-Reza
    Journal of Fluid Mechanics 2015
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  11. PRL
    Experimental demonstration of an ultrabroadband nonlinear cloak for flexural waves
    Darabi, Amir, Zareei, Ahmad, Alam, M-Reza, and Leamy, Michael J
    Physical review letters 2018
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