Aaron J.
Havens

I’m a postdoctoral researcher at FAIR on the Generative Modeling Foundations team under Brian Karrer and Yaron Lipman. I’m developing scalable methods for generative modeling and principled reward-based tilting / finetuning in both continuous and discrete domains. I’m especially passionate about modeling physical processes that help advance Engineering and science, taking into account geometric structures and invariants.

Previously I received a PhD in ECE from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where I worked on robust control theory $\cap$ machine learning under Prof. Bin Hu. I also have an MS in Aerospace Engineering from UIUC where I primarily worked on learning algorithms for autonomous field-robotics under Prof. Girish Chowdhary. I’ve been fortunate to have several industry research experiences at Meta FAIR NYC, Peferred Networks Tokyo, TuSimple (autonomous semi-trucks) and NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL).

I’m orignally from Des Moines, Iowa 🌽 and earned my Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.