Amir Barati Farimani
Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Courtesy Appointments, Biomedical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Machine Learning
Amir Barati Farimani received his Ph.D. in 2015 in mechanical science and engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His Ph.D. thesis was titled “Detecting and Sensing Biological Molecules using Nanopores.” He extensively used atomistic simulations to shed light on the DNA sensing and detection physics of biological and solid state nanopores. Right after that, he joined Professor Vijay Pande’s lab at Stanford. During his post-doc, he combined machine learning and molecular dynamics to elucidate the conformational changes of G-Protein Coupled Receptors (GPCRs). He specifically was focused on Mu-Opioid Receptors to elucidate their free energy landscape and their activation mechanism and pathway.
The Barati Farimani’s lab, the Mechanical and Artificial Intelligence laboratory (MAIL), at Carnegie Mellon University is broadly interested in the application of machine learning, data science, and molecular dynamics simulations to health and bio-engineering problems. The lab is inherently a multidisciplinary group bringing together researchers with different backgrounds and interests, including mechanical, computer science, bio-engineering, physics, material, and chemical engineering. The mission is to bring the state-of-the-art machine learning algorithm to mechanical engineering. Traditional mechanical engineering paradigms use only physics-based rules and principles to model the world, which does not include the intrinsic noise/stochastic nature of the system. To this end, the lab is developing the algorithms that can infer, learn, and predict the mechanical systems based on data. These data-driven models incorporate the physics into learning algorithms to build more accurate predictive models. They use multi-scale simulation (CFD, MD, DFT) to generate the data.
Using Machine Learning and AI to Scale Up Additive Manufacturing
A new material for water desalination
The Role of AI and Machine Learning in Mechanical Engineering
The intersection of AI & Mechanical Engineering
Education
2015 Ph.D., Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Research Interests
- additive manufacturing
- advanced manufacturing
- autonomous vehicles
- bioengineering
- computational engineering
- computational fluid dynamics
- computational modeling
- digital twins
- energy
- generative manufacturing
- human health
- infrastructure
- machine learning
- manufacturing workforce
- materials for energy efficiency
- micro/nanoengineering
- renewable energy
- robotics
- smart cities
- transport phenomena
Media mentions
CMU Engineering
Training robotic arms with a hands-off approach
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University recently trained a robotic arm with human movements generated by artificial intelligence.
Mechanical Engineering
More MOFs, less problems
CMU researchers introduce MOFormer, a machine learning model that can achieve higher accuracy on prediction tasks than leading models without explicitly relying on 3D atomic structures.
Tech Explorist
Barati Farimani to work on self-charging power sources
MechE’s Amir Barati Farimani was mentioned in Tech Explorist as a contributor for new research on self-charging power sources for space applications.
CMU Engineering
Machine learning fights global warming
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have introduced a machine learning model to identify ionic liquid molecules to make identifying candidates for CO2 storage easier.
CMU Engineering
Machine learning gets smarter to speed up drug discovery
This self-supervised learning framework is better at predicting molecular properties than other machine learning models because it can use large amounts of unlabeled data that other models can’t.
CMU Engineering
Using AI to provide the world with drinking water
Amir Barati Farimani is seeking new possibilities in water purification through using AI agents in the desalination process.
The Academic Minute
CMU Engineering week on The Academic Minute
August 16 begins Carnegie Mellon Engineering week on National Public Radio’s (NPR) The Academic Minute. Each day, a different professor will discuss interesting facets of their research. The faculty lineup includes: Daniel Armanios, Amir Barati Farimani, Bin He, Destenie Nock, and Larry Pillegi.
Mechanical Engineering
Using deep learning to research material transport in the brain
Understanding the causes of degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and Parkinson's will require the meticulous investigation into the complex, branch-like neurite networks of the brain. Machine learning can be an efficient, highly accurate part of this process.
CMU Engineering
Pushing through nanopores: Genetic sequencing with MXene
MXene—a single layer, two-dimensional nanomaterial—shows potential for solid-state, nanopore-based DNA sequencing. This could lead to efficient, rapid diagnostics and personalized medicine.
WIRED
Barati Farimani quoted on predictive drone swarms
MechE’s Amir Barati Farimani was quoted in WIRED about predictively-controlled drone swarms. The drones were able to adjust their trajectory based on how they expect neighboring drones to move, rather than merely reacting to them through a “predictive” algorithm. This represents a step toward a goal of fully-autonomous drone swarms.
CMU Engineering
Order up! AI finds the right material
Amir Barati Farimani has improved an algorithm to predict a material’s properties.
Pittsburgh Health Data Alliance
Jayan and Barati Farimani featured on norovirus project
MechE’s Reeja Jayan and Amir Barati Farimani were featured in the Pittsburgh Health Data Alliance newsletter on their Norovirus Sensor project.