Cecilia Clementi

Cecilia Clementi is an Italian-American scientist who specialises in the simulation of biomolecules. She is a Professor of Theoretical and Computational Biophysics at the Free University of Berlin. She was previously a Professor of Chemistry and Physics at Rice University and co-director of the National Science Foundation Molecular Sciences Software Institute. From 2017 to 2019, she held an Einstein Foundation fellowship. In 2020 she was appointed Einstein Professor of Physics at Freie Universität Berlin.

She is also a scuba divemaster and underwater photographer. Some of her photographs are shown in her Instagram page

Email: cecilia.clementi@fu-berlin.de

Dr. Alessandro Caruso

Alessandro Caruso

Postdoc

About: Alessandro's research focuses on designing and developing new message-passing architectures to incorporate long-range interactions in machine-learned potentials of large biomolecular systems.

Email: alessandro.caruso@fu-berlin.de

More: Website

    Dr. Raquel López-Ríos de Castro

    Raquel López-Ríos de Castro

    Postdoc

    About: Raquel is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow. Her research focuses on developing computational and machine learning methods to enhance protein structure modeling and accelerate the discovery of new therapeutics.

    Email: raquel.lopez-rios.de.castro@fu-berlin.de

    More: Google Scholar

      Dr. Lorenzo Giambagli

      Lorenzo Giambagli

      Postdoc

      About: Lorenzo is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow. His research focuses on the interpretability of Graph Neural Networks used for Machine Learning Potentials, through the lens of graph theory and statistical mechanics.

      Email: lorenzo.giambagli@fu-berlin.de

      More: https://lorenzogiambagli.com/

        Dr. Luca Sagresti

        Dr. Luca Sagresti

        Postdoc

        About: Luca's research focuses on pushing the boundaries of biomolecular simulations by adapting machine-learned coarse-grained force fields across broader chemical spaces and on multiscale modeling by bridging quantum, atomistic and CG simulations.

        Email: l.sagresti@fu-berlin.de

        More: Google Scholar

          Dr. Zakariya El-Machachi

          Dr. Zakariya El-Machachi

          Postdoc

          About: Zak is a postdoctoral researcher funded by the Einstein Foundation Berlin within the research project "Einstein Visiting Fellow Prof. Mark E. Tuckerman". His work focuses on device scale modelling for solid polymer electrolytes using machine-learning interatomic potentials and generative flow-based models.

          Email: zakariya.el.machachi@fu-berlin.de

          More: Google Scholar

            Dr. Jorge Rosa-Raíces

            Jorge Rosa-Raíces

            Postdoc

            About: Jorge (he/him) is a postdoctoral scholar supported by the Einstein Stiftung Berlin to develop efficient methods for modeling quantum effects during charge transport in liquid electrolytes. He is also interested in building AI-boosted tools to enable kinetically-consistent coarse-graining of molecular systems and to extract free-energy landscapes from nonequilibrium molecular data.

            Email: j.rosa-raices@fu-berlin.de

            More: LinkedIn

              Dr. Gianmarco Lazzeri

              Dr. Gianmarco Lazzeri

              Postdoc

              About: Gianmarco joined the lab with the goal of developing a transferable Machine Learning Force Field for membrane proteins. He studied in Pisa (Bachelor’s in Physics) and Trento (Master’s in Quantitative and Computational Biology), and achieved his PhD at the Frankfurt Institute of Advanced Studies and Goethe University Frankfurt in the Lab of Prof. Roberto Covino, where he spearheaded the development of the AI-driven path sampling method AIMMD.

              Email: g.lazzeri@fu-berlin.de

              More: Google Scholar

                Finn Tillinger

                Finn Tillinger

                PhD Candidate

                About: Finn's research focuses on the development of new machine learning models for molecular dynamics simulations of large biomolecules. He is specifically interested in incorporating long-range interactions in inherently local message passing neural networks.

                Email: finn.tillinger@fu-berlin.de

                  Klara Bonneau

                  Klara Bonneau

                  PhD Candidate

                  About: Klara is a PhD Candidate of the FAIME project funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research. Her research is focussed on building machine learned coarse grained force fields for proteins and interpreting them using explainable AI tools.

                  Email: klara.bonneau@fu-berlin.de

                  More: Google Scholar

                    Andrea Gulyas

                    Andrea Gulyas

                    PhD Candidate

                    About: Andrea is an IMPRS-BAC PhD candidate. Her research focuses on developing machine-learned coarse-grained models to simulate protein folding, disorder, and aggregation.

                    Email: aguljas@zedat.fu-berlin.de

                    More: Google Scholar

                      Edoardo Rolando

                      Edoardo Rolando

                      PhD Candidate

                      About: Edoardo's research focuses on the development and improvement of machine learning-based force fields for biomolecular systems, with an emphasis on integrating experimental data to increase accuracy and transferability.

                      Email: edoardo.rolando@fu-berlin.de

                      More: Google Scholar

                        Ana Cristina Molina Taborda

                        Ana Cristina Molina Taborda

                        PhD Candidate

                        About: Ana is a PhD candidate at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research is focused in developing machine-learned coarse-graining models for large proteins.

                        Email: ana.molina.taborda@fu-berlin.de

                          Jacopo Venturin

                          Jacopo Venturin

                          PhD Candidate

                          About: Jacopo is an IMPRS-BAC PhD candidate. He joined the group after his bachelor in physics at university of Florence through a fast track program of the Max Planck Institute. He’s work focuses on including long-range interactions and thermal dependency into coarse grained models for proteins.

                          Email: jacopo@physik.fu-berlin.de

                          More: Google Scholar

                            Ella Viale-Sole

                            Ella Viale-Sole

                            PhD Candidate

                            About: Ella is a Freie Universität Berlin PhD candidate. She works on the development and application of machine learning methodologies for complex molecular systems.

                            Email: ellav73@zedat.fu-berlin.de

                              Rocky Kamen-Rubio

                              Rocky Kamen-Rubio

                              Master's Thesis Student

                              About: Rocky is a Master's student in the Physics department at the FU, currently working on optimizing prior architecture and training cycles for machine-learned course-grained molecular dynamics models.

                              Email: kamenrur95@zedat.fu-berlin.de

                                Anne Mc Quaid

                                Anne Mc Quaid

                                Master's Thesis Student

                                About: Anne is a Master's student currently studying the application of a machine-learned, transferable coarse-grained model to TCR-pMHC complexes.

                                Email: annem00@physik.fu-berlin.de

                                  Mariastella Cascone

                                  Mariastella Cascone

                                  Visiting PhD Candidate (Jan '26 - Jun '26)

                                  About: Mariastella is a visiting student from Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa), where she works under the supervision of Prof. Francesco Raimondi and Prof. Benedetta Mennucci. In her project, she tries to combine elements of Computational Chemistry and Structural Bioinformatics to model and design magneto-sensitive flavoproteins.

                                  Email: mariastella.cascone@sns.it

                                  More: LinkedIn

                                    Angel Dassi

                                    Angel

                                    Master's Thesis Student

                                    About: Angel is a visiting Master’s student from ENS Paris-Saclay working on the optimization of the AWSEM force-field to integrate it as a prior potential for machine-learning coarse-grained models of protein.

                                    Email: angel.dassie@ens-paris-saclay.fr

                                    More: LinkedIn

                                      Beatrice Rizzelli

                                      Beatrice

                                      Master's Thesis Student

                                      About: Beatrice is a Master's student. Her research project focuses on fine-tuning machine-learning coarse-grained force fields for protein dynamics by incorporating experimental observables as additional training targets via reweighting.

                                      Email: beatrice.rizzelli@gmail.com

                                      More: LinkedIn

                                        Richard Bartels

                                        Richard Bartels

                                        Master's Thesis Student

                                        About: Richard is based in Berlin and is a Master's student in Biophysics at Humboldt University of Berlin. His research focuses on adaptive learning for coarse-grained molecular simulations, using atomistic mean-force calculations to improve neural-network-based force fields.

                                        Email: bartelri@hu-berlin.de

                                          Gabriele Poccianti

                                          Gabriele

                                          Master's Thesis Student

                                          About: Gabriele is a Master’s student. In his master’s thesis he worked on Operator Learning for the emulation of reaction-diffusion systems. Currently, he is working on timescale consistency between machine learning coarse-grained (MLCG) simulations and all-atom (AA) simulations using Koopman theory.

                                          Email: gabriele.poccianti@gmail.com

                                          More: LinkedIn

                                            Dr. Damiano Cianferoni

                                            Dr. Damiano Cienferoni

                                            Visiting Postdoc

                                            About: Damiano is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Luis Serrano Lab at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (Barcelona). Supported by an EMBO Travel Grant, he is exploring whether protein binding specificity can be predicted from conformational dynamics using MLCG potentials and BioEmu, with an initial focus on antibody–antigen complexes.

                                            Email: cianferonidamiano@gmail.com

                                            More: LinkedIn

                                              Masuma Suleymanova

                                              Masuma Suleymanova

                                              Visiting PhD Candidate (Jun '26 - Jul '26)

                                              About: Masuma is a part of Marie Skłodowska-Curie “Track the Twin” doctoral network based in BCMaterials, Spain, under the supervision of Prof. Ivan Infante. Her research focuses on developing Machine Learning Force Fields (MLFFs) for Quantum Dots. The primary goal of collaboration with FUB is understanding the role of long-range interactions in transferability of MLFFs.

                                              Email: masuma.suleymanova@bcmaterials.net

                                              More: LinkedIn

                                                Alumni

                                                Dr. Iryna Zaporozhets

                                                Iryna Zaporozhets

                                                Postdoc

                                                Current Position: Senior Applied Scientist, Microsoft Research

                                                  Dr. Nick Charron

                                                  Nick Charron

                                                  PhD Candidate and Postdoc

                                                  Current Position: Senior Machine Learning Scientist, Genentech

                                                    Dr. Félix Musil

                                                    Félix Musil

                                                    Postdoc

                                                    Current Position: Cusp AI

                                                      Dr. Clark Templeton

                                                      Clark Templeton

                                                      Postdoc

                                                      Current Position: Researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

                                                        Dr. David Rosenberger

                                                        David Rosenberger

                                                        Postdoc

                                                        Current Position: BAM Federal Institute for Materials Research

                                                             Contact Us   

                                                          Head

                                                          Prof. Dr. Cecilia Clementi

                                                          Office

                                                          Swantje Hartmann-Rolke

                                                          Phone

                                                          +49 30 838 64013

                                                          Email

                                                          s.hartmann-rolke@fu-berlin.de

                                                          Address

                                                          Freie Universität Berlin, FB Physik
                                                          Arnimallee 12, 14195 Berlin
                                                          AG Clementi
                                                          Germany