Curriculum Vitae
Cosmologist working at the intersection of cosmological data analysis, statistical inference, probabilistic machine learning, and computational methods. Graduating Fall 2026 and applying for postdoctoral positions.
Education
Ph.D. in Physics
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA
Direct Ph.D. from the B.Sc., completed in 3.5 years.
Advisors: Glenn D. Starkman, Craig J. Copi · GPA 3.7/4.0
B.Sc. in Physics
Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
GPA 18.85/20 — Rank 4 of 56
Publication summary
- 11 papers: 7 published / accepted, 4 under review. 78+ citations (Google Scholar and INSPIRE-HEP). Two further first-author manuscripts in preparation, listed separately.
- 3 first-author and 1 second-author papers among the 11; both in-preparation manuscripts are first-author.
- 8 papers on CMB statistics and cosmic topology (5 in JCAP), plus a COMPACT Collaboration review in Nature Astronomy (co-author, 20+ authors).
- 2 papers on Bayesian evaluation and inference-time scaling of transformer models, including a main-conference paper at ICLR 2026.
Methodological expertise
- Inference & statistics
- Bayesian inference and MCMC · likelihood-ratio / Neyman–Pearson testing · exact sampling distributions of test statistics · KL divergence and information-theoretic model comparison · ROC analysis and coverage calibration · large-scale Monte Carlo design
- Probabilistic ML
- Uncertainty quantification and posterior calibration · Dirichlet-posterior evaluation of stochastic model outputs (Scorio) · neural-network and classical classifiers benchmarked against a computable likelihood. Working knowledge of neural likelihood and likelihood-ratio estimation, variational autoencoders as likelihood emulators, normalizing flows and score-based generative models.
- Deep learning
- Transformer architectures and large language models — evaluation, uncertainty, inference-time (test-time) scaling · neural-network and classical classifiers for cosmological data · PyTorch, JAX, scikit-learn, Ray
- Computation
- GPU-accelerated and HPC / parallel scientific pipelines · numerical linear algebra on large covariance matrices · convergence and validation studies · Python, Julia, Mathematica, C
- Cosmology
- CMB temperature and polarization statistics · cosmic topology and eigenmode analysis · perturbation theory · primordial non-Gaussianity · Planck likelihood analysis
- Languages
- Persian (native), English (fluent)
Selected research
Detection Probability for Gaussian Model Comparison
COMPACT Collaboration · First author, project lead
Turning an expected information gain into a probability of detection on the one sky we actually observe.
Neural Likelihood Emulation: Simulation-Based Inference vs. MCMC
COMPACT Collaboration · Project lead
A direction I am moving into: replacing an intractable MCMC scan with amortized neural inference, and proving the replacement is honest.
CMB Statistics and Covariance Modelling for Cosmic Topology
COMPACT Collaboration · First author, project lead
If space is compact, the CMB is no longer described by a power spectrum. Someone has to compute what replaces it.
Learned Classification Benchmarked Against a Known Likelihood
COMPACT Collaboration · Co-author
A rare machine-learning problem where the optimal answer is computable, so the network's loss can be measured rather than assumed.
Calibrated Evaluation and Inference-Time Methods for Language Models
Case Western Reserve University · Second author / co-author
The same question as the cosmology work, asked of a different system: how much evidence does one noisy measurement actually carry?
Research mentorship
Undergraduate Research Mentor
Case Western Reserve University
Have mentored seven undergraduate researchers, working one-on-one on the underlying physics, computational methods, and the interpretation and validation of numerical results. A manuscript from one of these projects is expected to be submitted by the end of September 2026.
Software
- CMBtopology
- GPU-parallelized Python/HPC package for CMB covariance matrices in compact Euclidean topologies; adopted collaboration-wide for tensor-mode likelihood analysis.
- Scorio
- Open-source Bayesian evaluation toolkit for large language models (Python / Julia).
Collaborations
- COMPACT
- Cosmic topology collaboration — CWRU, Pittsburgh, Imperial College London, IFT Madrid, INFN Padova.
- LiteBIRD
- Satellite mission for CMB B-mode polarization.
Teaching
- CWRU
- Computational Methods in Physics (2025) · General Physics Lab (2023–2024)
- Sharif University
- Cosmology · Special Relativity · Electrodynamics I & II (2020–2021)
Talks
- 2025 Cosmic Topology Research at COSMO-25 (Conference)
28th International Conference on Particle Physics & Cosmology - 2025 LLM Evaluation and Test-Time Scaling (Invited seminar)
CERCA Weekly Seminar, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA - 2025 Advances in Cosmic Topology at the 7th Neighborhood Workshop (Workshop)
The 7th Neighborhood Workshop, Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, Penn State, PA, USA - 2024 Parity Violation in Cosmic Topology (Conference)
Parity Violation from Home Conference, Virtual - 2024 Cosmic Topology at the 6th Neighborhood Workshop (Workshop)
The 6th Neighborhood Workshop, Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, Penn State, PA, USA
Awards
- Art Walker Award for Outstanding Service, Department of Physics, Case Western Reserve University (2026)
- Full graduate funding (Ph.D. in Physics), Case Western Reserve University
- Iran National University Entrance Exams: ranked 20th of 20,000 (M.Sc.) and 420th of 150,000 (undergraduate, top 0.5%)
References
- Glenn D. Starkman — Professor of Physics, Case Western Reserve University (Ph.D. advisor)
- Craig J. Copi — Department of Physics, Case Western Reserve University (Ph.D. co-advisor)
- Andrew H. Jaffe — Professor of Astrophysics, Imperial College London (COMPACT)
- Yashar Akrami — Instituto de Física Teórica (IFT) UAM-CSIC, Madrid (COMPACT)
- Michael Hinczewski — Professor of Physics, Case Western Reserve University (machine learning)