Ben Burns

Education

Georgia Institute of Technology, 08/2024 — Present.
Ph.D. in Computational Science and Engineering, Expected 2029.
Supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
Advisors: Peng Chen and Sara Fridovich-Keil

University of Massachusetts Amherst, 06/2020 — 05/2024.
B.S. in Mathematics, B.A. in Computer Science.
summa cum laude, honors with greatest distinction
Thesis: A mean-field games approach to score-based generative modeling
Advisors: Markos Katsoulakis and Benjamin J. Zhang

Experience

SciML&UQ Group @ Georgia Tech, 08/2024 — Present.
Graduate research assistant supervised by Professor Peng Chen.

Dynamic and Autonomous Robotic Systems Laboratory, 09/2022 — 05/2024. Undergraduate research assistant supervised by Professor Donghyun Kim. Studied right-invariant extended Kalman filters and their applications to SLAM.

Math and Stats REU, UMass Amherst, 06/2023 — 08/2023.
Undergraduate research assistant supervised by Professor Markos Katsoulakis and Dr. Benjamin J. Zhang. Studied connections between score-based generative models and mean field games.

Math and Stats REU, UMass Amherst, 05/2022 — 08/2022.
Undergraduate research assistant supervised by Professor R. İnanç Baykur. Studied geometry and topology of 4-manifolds and related mapping class groups.

Air Traffic Systems Group, Noblis, 05/2021 — 08/2022.
Research intern supervised by Dr. Scott James. Summary of work available upon request.

Selected Presentations and Posters

Partial differential equation perspectives on score-based generative modeling.
SIAM Conference on Mathematics of Data Science (MDS24), 10/2024.

A mean-field games approach to score-based generative modeling.
Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Society (CAIMS) 2024 Annual Meeting, 06/2024.

A mean-field games approach to score-based generative modeling.
Massachusetts Undergraduate Research Conference, 04/2024.

Scholarships, Grants, and Awards

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, 2025.

Lifetime Undergraduate Course Assistant Award, 2024.

Commonwealth Honors College Research Grant, 2023.

Sheila R. Flynn Research Scholarship, 2023.

Berthiaume Innovation Challenge Winner, 2022.

Teaching

Graduate Teaching Assistant, Georgia Tech, 01/2025 — 08/2025.
Teaching assistant for Modeling and Simulation (CSE 6730) and Machine Learning (CS 7641).

Undergraduate Course Assistant (UCA), UMass Amherst CICS, 02/2021 — 05/2024.
10 semesters of experience in Intro to Programming, Algorithms, and Formal Language Theory. Graded assignments, hosted office hours, assisted recitation, and monitored forum. Recognized as outstanding course assistant four times, and honored with inaugural Lifetime Undergraduate Course Assistant Award.

Head Undergraduate Course Assistant, UMass Amherst CICS, 09/2022 — 02/2024.
Managed logistics for courses with 20+ staff and 300+ students. Ran staff meetings, designed homework and labs, hosted recitation and review sessions, and proctored exams.

Grader, UMass Amherst Math & Stats Dept., 09/2022 — 12/2022.
Graded homework for Math 471: Number Theory.

Service

President, CSE Graduate Student Association, 08/2025 — Present.

CTF Organizer, UMass Cybersecurity Club, 01/2024 — 05/2025.

UCA Program Coordinator, UMass Amherst CICS, 11/2022 — 05/2024.
Interviewed, hired and trained prospective undergraduate course assistants for all core CICS courses.

SIAM Chapter, UMass Amherst Math & Stats Dept., 09/2023 — 05/2024.
Initialized UMass student SIAM chapter and organized inaugural SIAM seminar.

HackUMass XI Organizer, UMass Amherst CICS, 04/2023 — 11/2023.

New Voices Lead Peer Mentor, UMass Amherst CICS, 09/2022 — 05/2023.
Mentored cohort of 5 freshman students from underrepresented groups in computer science.