Building Undermind.ai (2023-2024). 

• We use LLMs to automate reasoning and accelerate scientific research. 

Independent study (2022-2023). See Github/tomhartke. 

• Built an external memory module for a language model in python. The program extracts a structured knowledge graph from a set of known facts using GPT-3. The long term goal is to build an autonomous research assistant, which asks questions to fill gaps in the knowledge graph. 

• Explored and tested ways to improve the transformer architecture using nanoGPT.

• Brainstormed methods to shape the way information is stored in neural networks during training.

• Implemented the AlphaGo zero algorithm using tree search and deep neural networks.

• Built agents to play Atari-style games and Poker using policy gradients.

PhD in the group of Martin Zwierlein at MIT (2017-2022). 

Thesis: Fermion pairing and correlations under a quantum gas microscope.

See also: thesis defense slides, and a shorter technical summary.

• Created a quantum gas of attractive fermion pairs under a microscope, a system which sheds light on high-temperature superconductivity. 

• Invented, patented, and demonstrated a new method of storing and manipulating quantum information in the vibrational motion of pairs of fermonic atoms trapped in an optical lattice. 

• Invented a novel method of quantum gas microscopy to probe a repulsive Fermi gas. Observed local doublon-hole pairs which are a signature of the super-exchange mechanism that drives magnetic order of electrons in two-dimensional materials. 

• Measured the spin transport properties of a strongly-correlated Mott insulator of ultracold fermions. Such behavior is difficult to probe in solid state materials. 

• Wrote term papers on quantum tunneling in attractively interacting Bose-Einstein condensates and using the resolvent formalism to understand light-matter interactions in quantum mechanics.

Undergraduate research in the group of Jason Petta at Princeton University (2013-2017).

Thesis: Tailored electron-phonon interactions in semiconductor double quantum dots.

See also: summary for a physics audience: What’s interesting about quantum dots?

• Demonstrated coupling of the quantized motion of a single electron, vibrational phonons in a nanowire, and photons in a superconducting cavity by building a cavity-coupled double-quantum-dot device (undergraduate thesis in 2017).

• Designed and programmed an FPGA architecture for high speed phase-detection of superconducting resonators for qubit readout (related work, and documentation) (summer 2014).

• Upgraded a reactor in an attempt to grow nanowires with superconducting shells (summer 2015).

• Built simple models for quantum limits to measurement damage with Ed Boyden at MIT. 

• Simulated space plasma dynamics with Marc Swisdak at University of Maryland (summer 2016). 

• Explored chaotic classical and quantum systems with Herman Verlinde at Princeton (spring 2016).

• Measured the hypoxic response of stem cells at Celgene Cellular Therapeutics (summer 2012).

• Studied the deterioration of ceramic high-temperature thermal barrier coatings in turbine engines using scanning electron microscopy at Princeton (summer 2011).

• Biotech, neuroscience, and other research with Xapiens@MIT (2019-2022).

• Physics education outreach as a board member of the nonprofit Physics Unlimited (2018-2022), which also runs an annual competition for high school students. I wrote the 2016 competition problems on entropy and statistical mechanics.

• Robotics in high school. I co-designed the 2014 New Jersey Panasonic Creative Design Challenge. 

• Economics, history, sci-fi novels, archaeology, and ancient civilizations.