**Nawaf Alampara** [pvt.nawaf@gmail.com](mailto:pvt.nawaf@gmail.com) [Homepage](https://n0w0f.github.io/) | [github](https://github.com/n0w0f) | [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nawaf-a-78731612b/) | [HuggingFace](https://huggingface.co/n0w0f) | [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=R7K3xFIAAAAJ&hl=en) Summary =============================================================================== I am second-year PhD student, working with [Dr. Kevin Maik Jablonka](https://kjablonka.com/). I'm building machine learning systems to speed up scientific research. I love projects that involve both research and building the tooling that enables and accelerates that research. Lately, I’ve been analyzing general-purpose AI models/systems to understand their limitations in scientific applications ( where they fail ) and interpret them to uncover why they fail. My goal is to use these insights to design AI systems that aren’t just impressive on benchmarks but truly impactful for advancing science and research. Education 🏫 =================================================================== Nov 2023 – Present : **PhD Digital Chemistry / ML for Science** :
*Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena*, Jena, Germany :
Advisor: [Dr. Kevin Maik Jablonka](https://kjablonka.com/) :
Research Focus: Evaluation and development of foundation models for scientific applications, AI agents for discovery workflows. 2018 – 2020 : **MSc Energy Science** :
*Indian Institute of Technology Bombay*, Mumbai, India :
GPA: 8.55/10.0 :
Thesis: *Defects and Dopants in Cu₂O - A DFT study* (Received highest grade) :
Advisors: [Prof. K R Balasubramaniam](https://www.ese.iitb.ac.in/faculty/balasubramaniam-kavaipatti), [Prof. D Monder](https://www.ese.iitb.ac.in/~dmonder/) 2015 – 2018 : **BSc Physics** :
*Birla Institute of Technology Mesra*, Mesra, India :
GPA: 8.5/10.0 Research Interests =============================================================================== * Foundation Models for Science (Evaluation & Development) * AI Agents & Automation Workflows for Scientific Discovery * Geometric Deep Learning for Molecules & Materials * Computational Materials Science (DFT, MD) * Energy Materials (Electrolytes, Catalysts) * Scientific Software Development & MLOps Experience =================================================================== Nov 2023 – Present : **PhD Research Activities** :
*Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena*, Jena, Germany :
Nov 2023 – Apr 2024 : **AI Research Contractor (Part-time)** :
*Stability AI*, Remote :
: + Prepared datasets for training domain-specific large language models in chemistry. Jun 2022 – Sep 2023 : **Principal Engineer** :
*QpiVolta Technologies Pvt. Ltd.*, Bangalore, India :
: + Led development of *QpiVoltaET* cloud platform for accelerated materials discovery. : + Developed high-throughput screening workflow using GNNs and DFT. Jun 2021 – Jun 2022 : **Research Engineer** :
*QpiAI Technologies Pvt. Ltd.*, Bangalore, India :
: + Implemented end-to-end object detection pipelines (PyTorch). : + Developed DeepStream containers, custom C++ GStreamer plugins, and ML models for video analytics. Publications =============================================================== 1. **[MatText: Do Language Models Need More than Text & Scale for Materials Modeling?](https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.17295)**
**Nawaf Alampara**, Santiago Miret, Kevin Maik Jablonka.
2024. (*AI4Mat-Vienna 2024 spotlight*) 2. **[Are large language models superhuman chemists?](https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.01475)**
Adrian Mirza †, **Nawaf Alampara** †, Sreekanth Kunchapu †, Martiño Ríos-García †, ..., Kevin Maik Jablonka.
2024. (Accepted at *Nature Chemistry*) 3. **[Probing the limitations of multimodal language models for chemistry and materials research](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2411.16955)**
**Nawaf Alampara** , Mara Schilling-Wilhelmi , Martiño Ríos-García , ..., Kevin Maik Jablonka.
2024. (*AI4Mat-NeurIPS 2024 spotlight*, Under review at *Nature Computational Science*) 4. **[Formation of an extended defect cluster in cuprous oxide](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6463/ad4a82/)**
G Aggarwal, S Chawla, AJ Singh, **Nawaf Alampara**, D S Monder and K R Balasubramaniam.
*Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics*, 2024. († Equal contribution) Patents ============================================================================ 1. **[System and method for performing accelerated molecular dynamics computer simulations with uncertainty-aware neural network](https://patents.google.com/patent/US20240153595A1/en)**
Inventors: **Nawaf Alampara**, Aswanth Krishnan, Nagendra Nagaraja. 2. **[Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cathode active materials and method for deposition of the same](https://patents.google.com/patent/US20240072257A1/en)**
Inventors: Manjunath Gangaiah, **Nawaf Alampara**, Aswanth Krishnan. 3. **[System and method for sensor position optimization for autonomous vehicles](https://patents.google.com/patent/US20230214553A1/en)**
Inventors: Amlan Mukherjee, Arun Sehrawat, Nagendra Nagaraja, Aswanth Krishnan, **Nawaf Alampara**, ... Research Projects =================================================================== Mar 2021 – Oct 2021 : **EnergyNet: Geometric deep learning model for Structure-Property Prediction** :
Advisor: [Prof. Mayank Baranwal](https://www.sc.iitb.ac.in/~mayank/) :
Developed a GNN model predicting adsorption energy (*Top 7 in NeurIPS OC20 Competition*). Jan 2020 – Dec 2020 : **Ab-initio Thermodynamics of Defects in Cu₂O (MSc Thesis)** :
*Indian Institute of Technology Bombay*, Mumbai, India :
Advisors: [Prof. K R Balasubramaniam](https://www.ese.iitb.ac.in/faculty/balasubramaniam-kavaipatti), [Prof. D Monder](https://www.ese.iitb.ac.in/~dmonder/) :
Investigated intrinsic defects, dopants (alkali, H), and defect thermodynamics in Cu₂O using DFT (Quantum ESPRESSO) and Boltzmann transport. Identified formation mechanisms of complex defects. Jan 2020 – Jun 2020 : **Tight Binding Models for Nanoscale Systems** :
*Indian Institute of Technology Bombay*, Mumbai, India :
Advisors: [Prof. Ashwin A. Tulapurkar](https://www.ee.iitb.ac.in/wiki/faculty/ashwin), [Prof. Bhaskaran Muralidharan](http://cnqt-group.org) :
Calculated band structures of graphene nanoribbons. Modeled SSH chains (Python). May 2017 – Jul 2017 : **Fabrication of SiC Schottky diode** :
*Centre for Nanoscience, BDU*, Tiruchirappalli, India :
Advisor: [Prof. K. Jeganathan](https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=JR7IrawAAAAJ&hl=en) :
Fabricated 4H/6H-SiC Schottky diodes and characterized electrical parameters. Skills =============================================================================== Programming : Python (Primary), Golang, JavaScript, C++ ML/AI : PyTorch, PyTorch Geometric, HuggingFace, PyTorch Lightning, TensorFlow (Basic), Scikit-learn, OpenCV, NVIDIA DeepStream DevOps/Tools : Git/GitHub, Docker, FastAPI, MLflow, Flyte, CI/CD, Bash/Linux, Slurm (HPC) Scientific Computing : Quantum ESPRESSO, VASP, ASE, Pymatgen, NumPy/SciPy/Pandas Honors and Awards ================================================================== * **Inspire Fellowship (SHE)** - Awarded by Dept. of Science and Technology, Govt. of India * **Summer Research Fellowship (SRF 2016)** - Awarded by Indian Academy of Sciences --- END OF FILE cv_eample.md.html ---