dr. Avishek Das

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CV / Biography

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher interested in understanding nonequilibrium self-organization in living and autonomous systems. Currently in the group of Prof. Pieter Rein ten Wolde, I am exploring how information flow and feedback constrains bacterial performance during chemotaxis. We seek to rationalize bacterial behavior as autonomous machines navigating noisy nutrient gradients by using environmental information most effectively.

During my PhD with Prof. David Limmer at University of California Berkeley, I designed novel numerical paradigms for the optimal control of diffusive nonequilibrium many-body systems . This approach yielded new and efficient algorithms to sample rare fluctuations and reactive events in nonequilibrium simulations, using tools from reinforcement learning. We also developed an inverse design algorithm for the self-assembly of colloids in nonequilibrium conditions, for targeting arbitrary structural and dynamical order parameters.

I have also co-founded a yearly mathematics bootcamp for physical chemistry PhD students at UC Berkeley.