Computational Scientific Machine Learning Lab
I am an Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering at The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180 in the United States. I lead the Computational Scientific Machine Learning Lab. I am also affiliated with Rensselaer-IBM Artificial Intelligence Research Collaboration. Prior to that, I was a Postdoc in the AI Institute in Dynamic Systems at the University of Washington, Seattle collaborated with Nathan Kutz and Steve Brunton. I obtained my Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering and Scientific Computing in 2021 from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, advised by Karthik Duraisamy.
Our Computational Scientific Machine Learning (CSML) Lab is dedicated to developing transformative computational and data-driven (ML/AI) methodologies to predictive forward/inverse modeling, and control of complex physical systems, ultimately advancing and accelerating scientific discovery.
Our computing resources include computational awards on supercomputing clusters: RPI-AiMOS, Purdue Anvil, NERSC Perlmutter (A100), TAMU Faster (A100), NREL Kestral (A100), New York State Empire-AI system (GB200), and a private workstation of 3xA6000 48GB GPUs. Besides, each Ph.D. student is equipped with a high-end workstation with a 3090 24GB GPU.
We are hiring! I am actively seeking highly motivated Ph.D. students with a Master's degree in engineering. If you are passionate about scientific machine learning, computational modeling, and advancing the frontiers of AI for physical systems, we encourage you to apply!
To inquire or apply, please send your CV and a brief statement of research interests to pans2@rpi.edu.
News
  • 12/2025 Ph.D. student Ling Yue published a paper as first author on multi-agent systems for CFD at NeurIPS 2025 Workshop ML4PS [Paper]
  • 12/2025 Ph.D. student Ling Yue published a paper as first author on a fine-tuned LLM for OpenFOAM at NeurIPS 2025 Workshop ML4PS [Paper]
  • 12/2025 Our collaboration with Min-Ling Zhang and Shimin Di's group on the automatic transformation of MCP from code repository has been published on NeurIPS 2025 Workshop SEA [Paper]
  • 12/2025 Our collaboration with Sicheng He's group on the largest airfoil dataset has been published at NeurIPS 2025 [Paper] [Code]
  • 09/2025 Ph.D. student Shahriar Akbar Sakib published a paper as first author on learning noise-robust stable Koopman operator for control with Hankel DMD in IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology [Paper]
  • 08/2025 Ph.D. student Nithin Somasekharan published a paper as first author on nonlinear dimensionality reduction with convergence in Proceedings of The Royal Society A [Paper].
  • 08/2025 Published a paper on parametric surrogate modeling for heat transfer with UQ in Progress in Nuclear Energy [Paper].
  • 06/2025 Received Google Research Scholar Award [Link]
  • 05/2025 Presented a work on "Toward Intelligent CFD Workflows in the Era of Large Language Models" at Algorithms For Multiphysics Models In The Post-Moore's Law Era in Los Alamos [Abstract]
  • 05/2025 Presented a work on "Deep Koopman Sensing" at 1st International Symposium on AI and Fluid Mechanics [Abstract]
  • 04/2025 Ph.D. student Nithin presented a work on "Deep Koopman Sensing" at 2nd ERCOFTAC Workshop on Machine Learning for Fluid Dynamics [Abstract]
  • 11/2024 Ph.D. student Weichao presented a work on meshless surrogate models with stability guarantees at APS-DFD 2024 [Abstract].
  • 11/2024 Co-advised Ph.D. student Isaac presented a work on data-driven surrogate models that accelerate fluid solver at APS-DFD 2024 [Abstract].
  • 11/2024 Ph.D. student Weichao presented a work on meshless surrogate models with stability guarantees at APS-DFD 2024 [Abstract].
  • 11/2024 Ph.D. student Nithin presented a work on convergence guaranteed autoencoder at APS-DFD 2024 [Abstract][Paper].
  • 11/2024 Ph.D. student Weichao presented a work on meshless surrogate models with stability guarantees at MORE 2024 [Abstract].
  • 11/2024 Ph.D. student Shahriar presented a work on learning Koopman operator from data at SIAM New York-New Jersey-Pennsylvania Section Conference [Abstract].
  • 10/2024 Presented a work on meshless surrogate models with stability guarantees at AMS Fall Eastern Sectional Meeting [Abstract].
  • 09/2024 Published a co-author paper on distributed deep compression of deep sea wavefield data on edge device on Journal of Geophysical Research: Machine Learning and Computation [Paper]
  • 04/2025 Ph.D. student Shahriar released a work on noise-robust Koopman operator with physics-informed observables [Paper].
  • 07/2024 Presented a work on meshless surrogate models with stability guarantees at WCCM 2024
  • 07/2024 Presented a conference paper on learning parametric Koopman operator for hypersonic nonequilibrium flows at AIAA Aviation 2024. [Paper]
  • 07/2024 Co-advised student Soha presented a conference paper on learning preconditioner for incomplete LU factorization at AIAA Aviation 2024. [Paper]
  • 03/2024 Published a paper on the role of symmetry in lifting and reconstruction of Koopman operator with multiple invariant sets is published on Nonlinear Dynamics [Paper].
  • 03/2024 Published a co-author paper on using physics-informed neural network (PINN) for solving plasma physics with different geometry on Physics of Plasmas [Paper][Editor Pick].
  • 12/2023 Published a paper on The Journal of Open Source Software on a modular implementation of learning Koopman operator from data [Paper][Code]
  • 11/2023 Ph.D. student Nithin presented a work on differentiable finite-element solver using Nvidia Warp at APS-DFD 2023 [Abstract]
  • 01/2023 Published a paper meshless representation learning for PDE fields on Journal of Machine Learning Research [Paper]
Awards
  • Google Research Scholar Program
    2025
  • MICDE Fellowship
    2018
  • Chinese Outstanding Student Abroad Award (Ministry of Education of China, 500 globally)
    2018
  • Doctoral Fellowship
    2016
  • Rackham Summer Award
    2015
  • Richard and Eleanor Towner Prize for Outstanding Ph.D. Research (Department Nominee)
    2019
  • SIAM Student Travel Grant
    2017
  • Best Undergraduate Thesis in Fluid Mechanics (School of Aeronautical Engineering, Beihang University)
    2013
  • First Prize, College Mathematical Competition (2/1000, Beihang University)
    2011
Service
  • Technical Committee: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Fluid Dynamics), IEEE Symposium Series On Computational Intelligence
    2024-present
  • Panelist: National Science Foundation
    2024
  • Member: American Mathematical Society, American Physical Society,U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics
    2016-present
  • Reviewer: Nature Machine Intelligence, Nature Computational Science, Nature Communications, Science Advances, Communications Physics, Physical Review Letters, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Journal of Computational Physics, Geophysical Research Letters, Proceedings of the Royal Society A, SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, SIAM Journal on Applied Dynamical Systems, Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena, Journal of Nonlinear Science, Nonlinear Dynamics, Chaos, Physical Review E, Physical Review Fluids, Physics of Fluids, Journal of Fluids Engineering, AIAA Journal, Lab on a Chip, Neural Networks, Machine Learning: Science and Technology, Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, NeurIPS, Computer Physics Communications, Communication in Computational Physics, Computers and Fluids, International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, Journal of Sound and Vibration, Acta Mechanica Sinica, Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Letters, Computational Science and Engineering, Chemical Engineering and Processing, Journal of Computational Design and Engineering, Nuclear Materials and Energy, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence, IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering, IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine, IEEE Control Systems Letters, IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica, IEEE Access, Scientific Reports, PLOS One, Entropy, Applied Sciences, Mathematical Reviews, Mathematical Problems in Engineering, AIAA conferences.
    2016-present
Sponsors