Benjamin A. Burns
Hello! I am a third-year Machine Learning PhD student at Georgia Tech advised by Sara Fridovich-Keil. My research interests are in generative modeling and in inverse problems. I am grateful to be supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
Before moving to Georgia Tech, I completed my undergrad in math and CS at UMass Amherst, where I had the privilege to work with Markos Katsoulakis and Benjamin Zhang on score-based diffusion models.
I am passionate about teaching, with an emphasis on high school and early-college STEM education. During my time at UMass, I was heavily involved with the Undergraduate Course Assistant (UCA) program, serving both as a Head UCA and as a UCA program coordinator. I am proud to have been recognized with one of the inaugural Lifetime UCA awards.
publications
M. Kocabaş*, *, A. Geiger, K. Gauen, S. Fridovich-Keil. Beyond Best-of-k: Prior-Consistent DAPS for Ambiguous Nonlinear Inverse Problems. 10/2026.
, S. Fridovich-Keil. When, why, and how do diffusion posterior samplers fail? A finite-sample lens. 05/2026.
* denotes equal contribution, (α-β) denotes alphabetical author ordering.