About

Ali Taghibakhshi

Ph.D. student at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  • (Expected 2023) Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
  • (2021) M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
  • (2019) B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology

Short biography

I am currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) under supervision of Matthew West. I also work with Luke Olson and Scott MacLachlan. The main focus of my Ph.D. has been optimizing partial differential equations solvers using machine learning. Along with my studies at UIUC, I have also done internships at NVIDIA and John Deere where I worked on machine learning projects, mainly concerning graph neural networks, computer vision, and reinforcement learning. I am originally from Iran and was born and raised in Tehran.

Awards

  1. The machine learning method I developed at NVIDIA was noted as one of the main quarterly highlights in the whole deep learning team at NVIDIA, and was presented to the NVIDIA vice president of deep learning. U.S. patent for this invention is submitted by NVIDIA (2022) .

  2. Top 3 technical innovation at UIUC research park among about 840 interns for the development of an AI-assisted mower for John Deere (2020) .

  3. UIUC MechSE Distinguished Fellowship Award (2019) .

  4. Ranked 2nd among more than 120 bachelor students in the Mechanical Engineering School of Sharif University of Technology, the best engineering school in Iran (2019) .

  5. Annual Mechanical Engineering Elite Student Award in three consecutive years among more than 120 mechanical engineering students at Sharif University of Technology (2016,2017,2018) .

  6. Honorable award of admission to M.Sc. of Mechanical Engineering at Sharif University of Technology due to exceptional performance during the first three years of B.Sc. Education (2018) .

  7. Silver medalist at 32nd Iran’s National Mathematical Olympiad (2014) .

  8. Bronze medalist at 1st Iranian Geometry Olympiad (IGO) (2014) .

  9. Silver medalist at 31st Iran’s National Mathematical Olympiad (2013) .

  10. Became a member of the Young Scholars Club (YSC) and Iran’s National Elite Foundation (INEF) due to exceptional performance at 31st Iran’s National Mathematical Olympiad (2013) .