Boris Kramer

Group members

Boris Krämer

Principal Investigator

Jacobs Hall (EBU1) | Room 4209 | +1 (858) 246-5327

Boris Kramer is an Assistant Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California San Diego. Before that, he spent four years as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before that, he got his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Virginia Tech. At UCSD, Professor Kramer is a member of the Center for Computational Mathematics (CCoM), Cymer Center for Control Systems and Dynamics, the Center for Extreme Events Research (CEER).

Yulin Guo

Postdoc (started January 2025)

Jacobs Hall (EBU1) | Room 4205

Yulin is interested in developing uncertainty quantification and surrogate modeling methods for large-scale engineering systems. Prior to joining the group, Yulin obtained his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Vanderbilt University and M.S. in Civil Engineering from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In his Ph.D., he worked on prediction uncertainty quantification methodology development for high-dimensional problems. Please see his webpage for more info.

Leonid Heide

Postdoc (started June 2026)

Jacobs Hall (EBU1) | Room 4205

Leonid's research concerns the modelling and control of dynamical systems. Prior to joining the group, Leonid obtained his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Minnesota, where he worked on developing physics-informed, data-driven reduced order modeling and optimal control methods for aerodynamic systems. More information on his webpage

Opal Issan

PhD Student in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (started Fall 2021)

Jacobs Hall (EBU1) | Room 4207

Opal is interested in reduced order modeling, numerical methods for partial differential equations, and physics-informed machine learning techniques with applications to space weather and solar physics. Prior to joining the group, she completed her undergraduate in Applied Mathematics from San Diego State University. More info on her webpage.

Hyeonghun Kim

PhD student in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (started Fall 2022)

Jacobs Hall (EBU1) | Room 4207

Hyeonghun is interested in data-driven reduced-order modeling for large-scale nonlinear multiphysics problems. Prior to joining the group, he received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Handong University, South Korea. More info on his webpage.

Steven Nguyen

PhD student in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (started Fall 2023, co-advised with Prof. Jorge Cortes)

Jacobs Hall (EBU1) | Room 4208

Steven is interested in researching data-driven approaches to modeling and control of large-scale dynamical systems. He is also interested in studying lifting transformations and their applications to non-autonomous systems. Prior to joining the group, Steven received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering at University of California Santa Barbara, where he worked on Koopman operator theory. More info on his webpage.

Dylan Hirsch

PhD student in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (started Fall 2023, co-advised with Prof. Sylvia Herbert)

Dylan is interested in developing methods for safety-critical control and reduced-order modeling, with applications to both cyber-physical and biological systems. He received his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and his S.M. in Biological Engineering from MIT. Through his master's research, he became excited about systems and control theory, inspiring his transition across fields. More info on his webpage.

Albani Olivieri

PhD student in Mechanical Engineering (started Fall 2024)

Jacobs Hall (EBU1) | Room 4208

Albani's interests are in optimization algorithms in the field of model order reductions for complex models such as Partial Differential Equations. Specifically, she works on quadratization and polynomialization algorithms for PDEs, both symbolically and from data. Before joining the group, she got her M.S. and B.S. in Computer Science Engineering at Universidad de Chile in Santiago, where she worked on designing and developing a quadratization/lifting algorithm for PDE models. In Fall 2022, she interned with Prof. Gleb Pogudin and Ecole Polytechnic where she also worked on quadratization algorithms. More info on her webpage.

Jaime Landeros

PhD student in Mechanical Engineering (started Fall 2024)

Jacobs Hall (EBU1) | Room 4207

Jaime is interested in multifidelity methods for Bayesian parameter inference, as applied to space radiation transport codes. Prior to joining the group, Jaime completed a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering at Cal Poly Pomona and a three-year internship with the NASA Goddard Solar Physics Laboratory where he explored physics-based surrogate modeling, uncertainty quantification, and data analysis in space weather and liquid propulsion applications. More info on his webpage.

Shelby Pullen

PhD student in Mechanical Engineering (starting Fall 2025)

Jacobs Hall (EBU1) | Room 4205

Shelby’s interests are in metal additive manufacturing techniques and how those processes can be optimized using reduced-order models and uncertainty quantification. She has previously interned at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division in the advanced manufacturing lab. There, she worked on deriving equations for twin wire welding additive manufacturing to predict mechanical properties and she built an interface to assist in welding research. Shelby graduated with her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and a minor in Mathematics from The George Washington University in Spring 2025.

Harrison Nodes

PhD student in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (starting Fall 2026, co-advised with Prof. Padmini Rangamani)

Jacobs Hall (EBU1) | Room 420X

Harrison is interested in applying uncertainty quantification and bayesian inference to problems in systems biology. Prior to joining the group, he earned a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering with a minor in Mathematics from Clemson University.

Andy Gusty

PhD student in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (starting Fall 2026)

Jacobs Hall (EBU1) | Room 4208

Andy’s interests are in control theory for spatially distributed systems and reduced-order modeling for additive manufacturing. Prior to joining the group, he received a B.S. in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Colorado Boulder, where he conducted research in Electrical Engineering on optimal design of nonlinear systems governed by PDEs such as soft robots and nonlinear transmission lines. He also worked in the Patterns & PDEs REU at UC Irvine to study singularly perturbed reaction-diffusion PDEs and will spend Summer 2026 at UCLA with the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM) RIPS program. More info on his webpage.

Shane Stevenson

PhD student in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (started July 2026)

Jacobs Hall (EBU1) | Room 4207

Shane's research focuses on advancing theory and computation for modeling, inference, and control of dynamical systems, particularly those that are noisy and partially observed, with an emphasis on reduced-order modeling and machine learning as core tools. He cares deeply about writing fast, sustainable research software that others can use across a range of applications in this space. Prior to joining the group, Shane received a B.S. in Computational Mathematics and Computer Science from San Diego State University, where he was a member of the Climate Informatics Lab working on atmospheric modeling and large AI weather models, and the Machine Vision and Perception Lab working with robotic systems and simulation. As an undergrad, Shane conducted research in uncertainty quantification at NIWC Pacific and spent eight months as a software developer at Collins Aerospace. More info on his webpage.

Undergraduate students

Fey Liu

BS student in Mechanical Engineering (Junior)

Jacobs Hall (EBU1) | Room 4208 (during Summer 2026)

Fey is the co-president of Triton Restoration Initiative at UCSD, working on restoring the Jacobs Hall clock. They are interested in exploring robotics and controls in the fields of oceanography, medical devices, and renewable energy.

Former group members

Postdocs

Dr. Harsh Sharma (09/2020-07/2025): Harsh worked on structure-preserving model reduction, both purely from data as well as intrusive model reduction, as well as scientifc machine learning. He contributed to a variety of applications from structural mechanics to soft robotics. After his 5y stint in our group, he started a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. You can find his webpage

Dr. Dongjin Lee (01/2022-08/2023): Worked on uncertainty quantification and biomass combustion on an international project with VIRNECT and KETI in Korea. After the 1.5y stint, he started a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Automotive Engineering at Hanyang University (Seoul, South Korea). You can find his website here

PhD students

Nathaniel Linden-Santangeli, 09/2020-06/2025, co-advised with Prof. Padmini Rangamani. Thesis: Uncertainty quantification methods to improve mechanistic predictability in systems biology, June 2025. You can find more info on his You can find his webpage.

Nick Corbin, 09/2021-05/2026. Thesis: Computational Methods for Model Reduction and Control of Nonlinear Systems, May 2026. You can find more info on his webpage.

Masters students

Justin Burzachiello (2025). Justin worked on spectral submanifold methods and model reduction. He moved to General Atomics (GA) to work on Tokamak fusion plasmas and is advised by Dr. Dmitry Orlov

Elle Lavichant, BS (2023) and MS (2024) in Mechanical Engineering. Elle worked with us for two years on developing a digital twin model for biomass combustion, both from the modeling perspective (cold flow, char combustion, chemistry) as well as the numerical implementation in the MFiX software.

Yizhe Huang, M.Sc. in CSE (2020), Thesis: Model Reduction and Iterative LQR for Control of High-Dimensional Nonlinear Systems. Yizhe started as a PhD student in Operations Research at UT Austin in Fall 2020.)

Liezl Maree, M.Sc. in ECE (2021). Worked on data-driven model reduction techniques for the St. Venante equations as part of a model framework for urban water flow systems. (Position after graduation: Test Engineer, General Atomics, San Diego, CA.)

Stephen Chen, MAE graduate student (09/2020-06/2021).

Parikshit Jain, M.Sc. in MAE (2020-2021). Worked on data-driven reduced-order modeling for the single-injector combustion application. (Position after graduation: Big data/ ML engineer at Nova Measuring Instruments.)

Undergraduate students

Rachel McClow, Mechanical Engineering (June 2025 - March, 2026): Rachel worked on a DARPA project for the prediction of cappilary wave turbulenece, where she explored Gaussian Process Regression as well as several machine learning classification algorithms. She will stay at UCSD to start her Ph.D. in MAE with Professor Claire Acevedo's Lab.

Anique Dittrich, Mechanical Engineering (June - Sept, 2024): Anique researched how quadratization algorithms obtain new sets of variables to describe complex dynamics that can be leveraged in operator learning for Koopman observables. She is an active member of UC San Diego's Human Powered Submarine as a co-lead of the drivetrain team.

Juan Diego Draxl Giannoni, Aerospace Engineering and Physics (2023-2025): Juan Diego explored the use of lifting transformations in structure-preserving model reduction of large-scale Hamiltonian systems. As part of his senior Physics thesis, he investigated whether lifting is a viable approach to reduce the computational cost and still conserve the structure of the system. He has contributed to two journal papers.

Emily Deboer, Mechanical Engineering (June - Sept 2023): Emily worked on data-driven model reduction for convective systems. Moreover, as part of her summer internship, sh developed a solar wind tunnel (V1) for eductational outreach which we offer at Barrio Logan, the San Diego Space Museum and the Southeast San Diego Science Fair. She is an active member at the Rocket Propulsion Lab (RPL).

Elle Lavichant, Mechanical Engineering (July 2022 - September 2023): Elle worked with us as an undergraduate researcher on biomass combustion simulations. She then continued to do her MS and working on the same project.

Hannah Haider, Aerospace Engineering (July-September 2022): Hannah worked in our group for a year on simulation and reduced-order modeling for the Vlasov-Poisson equation and other space weather fluid systems. She started a PhD at Columbia in Fall 2023.

Antoinette Gautier (July-September 2022), Mechanical Engineering: Antoinette did a summer internship in 2022 with us focusing on soft robotic simulation. She started a M.S. in Biomimicry at Arizona State University in Fall 2023.