Davide Passaro Computational Mathematics • AI research • Theoretical Physics • Postdoctoral Scholar
Portrait of Davide Passaro
Current role
Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar
Organization
Caltech (Pasadena, CA)
ORCID
0000-0001-5368-4635
GitHub
github.com/d-passaro
Inspire-HEP
i-HEP/D.Passaro.1
Contact
passaro.davide[at]protonmail.com
dpassaro[at]caltech.edu
Pasadena, California (USA) • Caltech

Davide Passaro — Computational Mathematics, AI and Theoretical Physics research.

Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Physics at Caltech. ORCID: 0000-0001-5368-4635.

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About

Summary

I am a theoretical physicist, mathematician and postdoctoral scholar at Caltech. My work spans mathematical physics and related areas in pure mathematics. My main focus on computational tooling, with open-source research software and peer-reviewed publications. More recently I have been pivoting to AI research with a focus on Reinforcement Learning for mathematical reasoning.

Theoretical Physics Mathematical Physics Machine Learning Reinforcement Learning Open Source

Education

  • PhD, Physics — University of Amsterdam — Advisor: Miranda Cheng (08/2024)
  • MS, Physics — Uppsala University — Advisor: Magdalena Larfors (05/2020)
  • Degree, Physics — Università degli Studi di Milano — Advisor: Luca Guido Molinari (06/2018)
  • Maturità (Italian high school diploma) — Liceo Scientifico Leonardo Da Vinci di Milano (06/2015)

Skills

Technical

Python C++ Mathematica Bash LaTeX Git Linux
NumPy SciPy FLINT pyTorch pyTorchGeometric Pandas

... and many more!

Domains

Mathematical Physics Low dimensional topology Knot theory Machine Learning Reinforcement Learning

Selected Projects

pyPlumbing project image

pyPlumbing

pyPlumbing is a SageMath package that provides specialized plumbing computation tools utilizing SageMath's powerful mathematical capabilities for an efficient computation of Ẑ-invariants.

Year: TBD

Collaborators: TBD

Open Source Research tooling
pySeifert project image

pySeifert

A Sage module for the computation of Z ^ invariants of Seifert manifolds with three and four singular fibers. PySeifert was developed as a companion to "3 Manifolds and VOA characters" ArXiv:2201.04640, to aide in the computation of topological invariants for Seifert manifolds and characters of certain vertex operator algebras.

Year: TBD

Collaborators: TBD

Open Source Collaboration
fk-compute project image

fk-compute

Description: TBD

Year: TBD

Collaborators: TBD

Open Source Collaboration
Ribbon-GNNs project image

Ribbon-GNNs

Description: TBD

Year: TBD

Collaborators: TBD

Work in progress Collaboration

Experience

Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Physics — Caltech 2024–present • Pasadena, California, United States
PhD candidate in Theoretical Physics - Universiteit van Amsterdam 2020–2024 • Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Publications & Preprints

c_eff from Surgery and Modularity

Authors: Shimal Harichurn, Mrunmay Jagadale, Dmitry Noshchenko, Davide Passaro

Publishing Status: Preprint (2025)

arXiv:2508.10087

3d Modularity Revisited

Authors: Miranda C. N. Cheng, Ioana Coman, Piotr Kucharski, Davide Passaro, Gabriele Sgroi

Publishing Status: Preprint (2024)

arXiv:2403.14920

3-Manifolds and VOA Characters

Authors: Miranda C. N. Cheng, Sungbong Chun, Boris Feigin, Francesca Ferrari, Sergei Gukov, Sarah M. Harrison, Davide Passaro

Publishing Status: Published in Communications in Mathematical Physics (2024)

DOI: 10.1007/s00220-023-04889-1

Heterotic line bundle models on generalized complete intersection Calabi Yau manifolds

Authors: Shimal Harichurn, Mrunmay Jagadale, Dmitry Noshchenko, Davide Passaro

Publishing Status: Published in JHEP (2021)

DOI: 10.1007/jhep05(2021)105

Quantum Modular Z^G-Invariants

Authors: Miranda C.N. Cheng, Ioana Coman, Davide Passaro, Gabriele Sgroi

Publishing Status: Published in SIGMA (2024)

DOI: 10.3842/SIGMA.2024.018