Emanuel Gordis
San Francisco, CA
About
I grew up in Berkeley, CA and was homeschooled. I build models that learn to simulate complex physical systems faster than classical methods allow.
Most recently, I founded Trim (YC W25), where I studied how different sequence-modeling approaches behave on physical systems. I developed a transformer-based physics world model using a custom attention mechanism, resulting in a 97% reduction in memory usage and a 6.5Γ speedup on Navier-Stokes benchmarks. The trim-transformer package is open source.
Before founding Trim, I conducted astrophysics research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory β simulating thermonuclear detonation in Type Ia supernovae β and quantum mechanics research at Princeton with Prof. Michael Littman, studying Rydberg atom quantum states. Both projects resulted in publications. I also built computer vision and ML infra at AWS.
I studied physics at Cornell and spent a formative stretch at Reed College, where I became the youngest federally licensed reactor operator in the United States.
Publications
Stability and Convergence of Nuclear Detonations in White Dwarf Collisions P. Anninos, D. Cruz-Lopez, B. Jiang, E. Gordis Β· arXiv, 2025
The hydrogen Rydberg atom viewed through the lens of the old quantum theory M. G. Littman, E. Gordis, P. Zhelnin, J. Arnold Β· American Journal of Physics, 2023
Research
Founder β Trim (YC W25) Β· 2025β2026
Physics world model with a custom attention architecture. Achieved 97% memory reduction and a 6.5Γ speedup on Navier-Stokes benchmarks over standard transformers. Open-sourced as trim-transformer, a drop-in replacement for standard PyTorch transformers.
Unified ANIE, backpropagation through time, and video transformers as a 2Γ2Γ3 design grid, ablated all 12 configurations across PDE benchmarks including Navier-Stokes, Burgers, and Shallow-Water. Found that distributional shift dominates performance. Shared weights with no block residuals were consistently near-optimal, suggesting an inductive bias toward iterative refinement.
Quantum Mechanics Researcher β Princeton University Β· 2020β2023
Investigated Rydberg atom quantum states using BohrβSommerfeld semi-classical analysis, with Prof. Michael Littman. Published in American Journal of Physics.
High-Energy Physics Researcher β Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Β· 2020β2021
Simulated Type Ia supernovae white dwarf collisions, modeling magnetic field effects on thermonuclear detonation propagation. Published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Other Experience
Software Engineer β Amazon Web Services Β· 2023β2024 Built load balancing infrastructure for ML training queues and led a live production database migration from SQL to DynamoDB with zero downtime.
Reactor Operator β Reed Research Reactor Β· 2019β2020 Youngest federally licensed reactor operator in the United States.
Education
Cornell University β B.A. Physics, Concentration in Computer Science Β· 2022