Sam Silverman

sssilver [at] bu.edu

Google Scholar, Github, Twitter, CV

I am a fifth-year PhD candidate in Computer Science at Boston University, where I am a member of the Shape Design & Computation Lab advised by Emily Whiting. I am interested in designing structures and architected materials with tailored physical behavior by integrating machine learning, computational mechanics, and digital fabrication.

Before starting my PhD, I obtained a Master's in Computer Science from Columbia University, where I worked with Brian A. Smith, and a Bachelor's in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Publications

Giant Flexoelectricity of Additively Manufactured Polylactic Acid

Dylan J. Balter, Colin McMillen, Alec Ewe, Jonathan Thomas, Samuel Silverman, Latitha Parameswaran, Luis Fernando Velásquez-García, Emily Whiting, Steven Patterson, Hilmar Koerner, Keith A. Brown.

Additive Manufacturing (2026)

PDF (4.5 MB), Supplemental (1.8 MB), BibTeX

Random-Walk Microstructures for Differentiable Topology Optimization

Samuel Silverman, Dylan Balter, Keith A. Brown, Emily Whiting

ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication (2025)

PDF (8.1 MB), Code, BibTeX

Data-Driven Nonlinear Deformation Design of 3D-Printable Shells

Samuel Silverman, Kelsey L. Snapp, Keith A. Brown, Emily Whiting

3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing (2025)

PDF (7.9 MB), Supplemental (2 MB), Code, BibTeX

A Physics-Informed Impact Model Refined by Multi-Fidelity Transfer Learning

Kelsey L. Snapp, Samuel Silverman, Richard Pang, Thomas M. Tiano, Timothy J. Lawton, Emily Whiting, Keith A. Brown

Extreme Mechanics Letters (2024)

PDF (3.7 MB), Data, BibTeX

Superlative Mechanical Energy Absorbing Efficiency Discovered Through Self-Driving Lab-Human Partnership

Kelsey L. Snapp, Benjamin Verdier, Aldair E. Gongora, Samuel Silverman, Adedire D. Adesiji, Elise F. Morgan, Timothy J. Lawton, Emily Whiting, Keith A. Brown

Nature Communications (2024)

PDF (49.2 MB), PDF (6 MB), Supplemental (6.5 MB), Data, Code, BibTeX

Navstick: Making Video Games Blind-Accessible via the Ability to Look Around

Vishnu Nair, Jay L. Karp, Samuel Silverman, Mohar Kalra, Hollis Lehv, Faizan Jamil, Brian A. Smith

ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (2021)

Project Page, PDF (7.1 MB), BibTeX

Software

Monad

C++ library for for homogenization of structured 2D and 3D grids. It provides solvers and material models for computing effective (homogenized) material tensors from heterogeneous microstructures.

Github

rwmicro

C++ library for generating random-walk microstructures—binary patterns created by a periodic random walk.

Github

gcs

Python library for generating 3D meshes of generalized cylindrical shells.

Github