Bio and CV

Tess Smidt is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and Principal Investigator of the Atomic Architects group in the Research Laboratory of Electronics. Her research sits at the intersection of physics, geometry, and machine learning, where she develops algorithms that embed physical and geometric structure into AI systems to model and design molecules, materials, and other physical systems.

Smidt is a 2025 AI2050 Early Career Fellow of Schmidt Sciences and a recipient of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) Award. Before joining the MIT faculty, she was the Alvarez Postdoctoral Fellow in Computing Sciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a Software Engineering Intern at Google Accelerated Science, where she co-developed the first Euclidean symmetry-equivariant neural networks, architectures which naturally handle 3D geometry and geometric tensor data. She earned her SB in Physics from MIT and her PhD in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Full CV

Education

Ph.D. in Physics, U.C. Berkeley (2018) [Dissertation]
M.A. in Physics, U.C. Berkeley (2014)
S.B in Physics with Minor in Architecture, MIT (2012)

Research Positions

• Associate Professor

  Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT
  Principal Investigator, Research Laboratory of Electronics
  (Summer 2025 - present)

• Assistant Professor

  Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT
  Principal Investigator, Research Laboratory of Electronics
  (Fall 2021 - Summer 2025)

• Luis W. Alvarez Postdoctoral Fellow in Computing Sciences

  Computational Chemistry, Materials, and Climate Group Computational Research Division, Berkeley Lab
  (Summer 2018 - Summer 2021)

• Software Engineering Intern

  Google Accelerated Science
  (Spring 2017 - Spring 2018)

• Graduate Research Assistant

  Neaton Group, U.C. Berkeley and Molecular Foundry @ Berkeley Lab
  (Fall 2013 - Spring 2018)
  
  Analytis Group, U.C. Berkeley
  (Spring 2012 - Spring 2013)

• Undergraduate Research Assistant

  Compact Muon Solenoid, MIT and CERN
  (Summer 2012)
  
  Conrad Group, MIT and Fermilab
  (Fall 2010 - Spring 2012)