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I came to AI through physics. I am a Senior Research Scientist at Meta, and my research centers on physical AI: building AI systems that perceive, model, and reason about the physical world. My work spans 3D computer vision, graph neural networks, world models and learned simulators, and LLM-powered agents, and I take ideas from research all the way to production: from real-time 3D face reconstruction from a single camera, to the virtual try-on system for Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, to agentic AI pipelines that design research studies, simulate users with LLM synthetic personas, and synthesize findings.

My background is in applied mathematics and mechanics. During my Ph.D. at UC Berkeley, I developed transformation-based methods to control waves, including cloaks for water and flexural waves. As a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard SEAS, I built deep learning surrogates for the inverse design of mechanical metamaterials and graph neural network simulators that learn to solve PDEs. That path shapes how I approach AI today: I look for the structure underneath a problem, such as the governing equations, the dynamics, and the symmetries, and build it into models so they generalize beyond the data they were trained on. This physics-informed machine learning perspective drives my interest in world models, embodied AI and robotics, and AI for science. My research has appeared in Physical Review Letters, PNAS, Advanced Materials, and Scientific Reports.

Research interests: physical AI · world models · learned physical simulators · 3D computer vision · graph neural networks · LLM agents · physics-informed ML · AI for science

mentorship:

PhD:
- Rini Gladstone (Meta Reality Labs), Project: Graph Neural Networks (GNN) for physics simulation
  Output: Coauthor in a publication (in process)
- Eder Medina (Harvard University), Project: Large deformation in soft lens
  Output: Coauthor in a PRL publication
- Bolei Deng (Harvard University), Project: Transition waves in multistable links
  Output: Coauthor in a PNAS publication
- Pan Deng (Harvard University), Project: Random resistor networks and porous media
  Output: Coauthor in a PRL publication
Master:
- Pourya Pilva (Aachen, Germany), Project: Graph neural networks in solid mechanics computation
  Output: Coauthor in a conference publication
- Sven Borden (EPFL, Switzerland), Project: Bistable units in robotics locomotion
  Output: M.Sc. thesis
Undergrad:
- Peter Grenfel, Project: Swimming in low-reynolds
  Ouput: Coauthor in a PRA publication

teaching:

Harvard University

Computational Methods (Finite Elements) (ESC 228), w/ Professor Katia Bertoldi, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Spring 2021

University of California Berkeley

Programming, w/ Professor Panayiotis Papadopoulos, Department of Mechanical Engineering, UC Berkeley, Fall 2018
Numerical Methods in Partial Differential Equations (Math 228B), w/ Professor James Sethian, Department of Mathematics, UC Berkeley, Spring 2018
Multivariable Calculus, w/ Professor Denis Auroux, Department of Mathematics, UC Berkeley, Fall 2017
Physics: Heat, Electricity, and Magnetism, w/ Professor Alex Zettl, Department of Physics, UC Berkeley, Spring 2016
Linear Algebra, w/ Professor Vera Serganova, Department of Mathematics, UC Berkeley, Fall 2015

Sharif University of Technology

Analytical Mechanics I , w/ Professor Akhavan, Department of Physics, SUT, Fall 2012
Mechanics of Materials III (Advanced) , w/ Professor Noseir, Department of Mechanical Engineering, SUT, Fall 2012
Electromagnetism II , w/ Professor Bahmanabadi, Department of Physics, SUT, Spring 2012
Electromagnetism I , w/ Professor Bahmanabadi, Department of Physics, Fall 2011
Numerical Computations , w/ Dr. Sadeghian, Department of Mechanical Engineering, SUT, Spring 2011
Instructor, Preparation for National Physics Olympiad , Alborz High School, 2012, Tehran, Iran