Tayebati Postdoctoral Fellows

Ashley Dale

Ashley Dale completed her PhD in electrical engineering and physics at Purdue University. Her faculty mentors are Mingda Li (NSE), Youssef Marzouk (AeroAstro), and Tess Smidt (EECS).

Her research focuses on explainable and trustworthy AI for materials science with applications in spintronics, black-box model exploration, Monte-Carlo simulation, data domain gap analysis, and physics education. She was also an Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering.

Patrick O’Reilly

Patrick O’Reilly completed his PhD in computer science at Northwestern University. His faculty mentors are Anna Huang (MTA/EECS) and Paris Smaragdis (MTA/EECS).

His research interests include content provenance and authenticity for generative models, machine learning
techniques for controllable audio generation, music information retrieval, and adversarial robustness for audio interfaces.

Jeffrey Ouyang-Zhang

Jeffrey Ouyang-Zhang completed his PhD in computer science at the University of Texas at Austin. His faculty mentors are Sergey Ovhinnikov (Biology) and Yunha Hwang (Biology/EECS).

His research interests involve in applying machine learning to biological applications. Previously, he served as a research assistant at the University of California, Berkeley.

Shubhi Sharma

Shubhi Sharma completed her PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology at the Yale University. Her faculty mentors are Serguei Saavedra (CEE) and Sara Beery (EECS).

Her research is broadly centered on building statistical models to predict and study the impact of climate change on forest biodiversity. She’s also interested in using evolutionary history and biogeography to inform questions of how species will adapt to a rapidly changing world.

Jason Yang

Jason Yang completed his PhD in chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology. His faculty mentors are Tommi Jaakkola (EECS) and Heather Kulik (ChemE).

His research focuses on AI for molecular engineering. Outside of research, he enjoys electronic music, exploring new places and foods, and learning about history and philosophy.

Congyue Deng

Congyue Deng completed her PhD in computer science at Stanford University. Her faculty mentors are Marin Soljacic (Physics) and Bill Freeman (EECS).

Her research interests include 3D computer vision and geometric deep learning. Her work focuses on designing feature representations for visual understanding that incorporate symmetries and geometric relations. She received her BS in Mathematics from Tsinghua University in 2020 with the top GPA in her class (1/114). She is also a recipient of the CPAL Rising Star Award in 2025.

Berthy Feng

Berthy Feng completed her PhD in computing and mathematical sciences at Caltech. Her faculty mentors are Mike Williams (Physics) and Bill Freeman (EECS).

While receiving her PhD, she was advised by Katie Bouman. She received her undergraduate degree in Computer Science at Princeton University. Berthy works on computational imaging, computer vision, and machine learning. She is primarily interested in developing data-driven and physics-based methods for scientific imaging. Berthy grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, and enjoys playing guitar, playing tennis, and going for runs in her free time.

Gokul Gowri

Gokul Gowri completed his PhD at Harvard in systems, synthetic, and quantitative biology. His faculty mentors are Jonathan Weissman (Biology) and Stephen Bates (EECS).

He builds computational and statistical tools to better understand living systems. At Harvard, he worked closely with Peng Yin and Allon Klein on problems related to information theory, representation learning, and single-cell genomics. Some of his other interests include watching WNBA, making playlists, and running/biking to Italian chain restaurants.

Emily Oliphant

Emily Oliphant completed her PhD in materials science and engineering and scientific computing at the University of Michigan. Her faculty mentors are Jeff Grossman, (Materials Science and Engineering) and Tess Smidt (EECS).

During her PhD, she was co-advised by Wenhao Sun and Emmanouil Kioupakis. She received her BS in Physics from Idaho State University in 2020, where she worked in particle physics at the Idaho Accelerator Center before shifting her focus to materials physics. Emily grew up in Eastern Idaho and enjoys music, hiking through remote terrain, and stargazing. 

Jonas Rein

Jonas Rein completed his PhD in organic chemistry at Cornell University. His faculty mentors are Masha Elkin (Chemistry), Connor Coley (Chemistry), and Stephen Bates (EECS).

Jonas was born in Germany and grew up in Mainz, where he completed his BS in Chemistry at Johannes-Gutenberg University in 2019, working with Siegfried Waldvogel on the electrochemical oxidation of arenes. During his PhD, he worked closely with Song Lin on organic redox chemistry and supported by an ERP fellowship.