I am a scientist working at the intersection of complex systems, statistical physics, design problems, and data-driven methods.

I am broadly interested in how data about complex systems can be encoded and manipulated in algebraic information structures. I use a combination of theoretical, computational, and data tools, such as statistical mechanics, stochastic processes, network theory, tensor networks, and sparse inference. These tools help me understand how the methods of inference and design work - and how they fail. Some recent applications included dynamical systems, nuclear reactors, naval engineering, human learning, self-assembling nanomaterials, and star formation.

Starting in January 2025 I will be an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. I will be hiring people to join my group, please see more information in Join. If you are interested in collaborating with me, please contact me directly.

Until December 2024, I am a Postdoctoral Scholar in the AI Institute in Dynamic Systems and Department of Mechanical Engineering at University of Washington, working with Profs. Krithika Manohar and J. Nathan Kutz. Previously I was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Complex Systems Lab at University of Pennsylvania, working with Prof. Dani S. Bassett. I got my Ph.D. in Physics in 2020 from University of Michigan, advised by Prof. Greg van Anders. En route, I also got M.Sc. in Physics in 2017 and Certificate in Complex Systems in 2019 from University of Michigan. I started my undergraduate studies at Belarusian State University and transferred to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where I got my B.Sc. in Physics in 2015.

Email: aklishin[youdecide]uw[something]edu
aklishin[ifyouwant]hawaii[another]edu

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News

 

2024/12: I was a guest on the program “Where the world is going” at Radio Liberty talking about AI, neural nets, robots, and the Turing test done on you (in Belarusian)

2024/10: I gave a seminar on my system identification and sparse sensing work at the Data-Driven Science and Engineering Seminar

2024/10: I am excited to announce that I am joining University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa as Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering in January 2025. Always happy to talk about new collaborations! For prospective students, please read the Join section.

2024/07: new coauthored paper on sensor placement for digital twins published in Energies

2024/03: new preprint on statistical mechanics of system identification

2023/09: new coauthored preprint on human learning of hierarchical networks

2023/08: new coauthored preprint on distributed system design

2023/07: new preprint on data-induced interactions of sparse sensors

2023/06: new coauthored software package for tensor network computations

2023/01: translated the Sexual Configurations Theory zine into Belarusian

2022/10: started as a postdoc at UW

2022/07: new preprint on how humans learn networks in finite time and with mental errors

2022/02: new preprint on statistical mechanics of network learning

2021/12: new coauthored preprint on gender inequality in citations across physics

2021/11: new coauthored preprint on optimizing networks for human learnability

2021/10: launched the Belarusian Interdisciplinary Seminar and gave the inaugural lecture. Schedule and updates here (in Belarusian and Russian languages)

2021/07: translated the Complexity Explained booklet into Belarusian

2021/04: my Ph.D. thesis won the 2021 Kurt M. Terwillinger Memorial Thesis Prize from U Michigan Physics

2021/03: new preprint on topological design of self-assembly

2021/02: third paper on Systems Physics to appear in the recently launched Journal of Physics: Complexity

2020/09: started as a postdoc at UPenn

2020/06: new paper on entropic order published in Soft Matter

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