PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Gautam Reddy

Also known as Gautam Reddy Nallamala

Gautam Reddy is a physicist and machine-learning researcher whose work connects reinforcement learning with biological navigation and the mechanics of learning in neural networks. After studying engineering physics at IIT Bombay, he earned a physics Ph.D. from UC San Diego in 2019 and joined NTT Research's PHI Lab as a research scientist in 2021 after an independent Harvard postdoctoral fellowship. His work includes reinforcement-learning studies of soaring, a model of discontinuous learning, and an account of induction heads in in-context learning; that paper received an ICLR 2024 Honorable Mention. He coauthored a 2025 ICLR study on the memorization threshold for generalization and a 2026 paper introducing LENS; as of October 2026, he is an assistant professor of physics at Princeton University.

Badges

Timeline

  1. 2016

    Learning to soar

    In 2016, he coauthors the PNAS paper “Learning to soar in turbulent environments” with Antonio Celani, Terrence J. Sejnowski and Massimo Vergassola.

  2. 2018

    A glider in the field

    In 2018, he coauthors a Nature study that uses reinforcement learning to train a glider in the field to navigate atmospheric thermals autonomously.

  3. 2019

    A physics doctorate

    He studies engineering physics at IIT Bombay and completes a physics Ph.D. at the University of California, San Diego, in 2019.

  4. August 2021

    Joining NTT's PHI Lab

    In August 2021, he joins NTT Research's PHI Lab as a research scientist after an independent postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard's NSF-Simons Center for Mathematical and Statistical Analysis of Biology.

  5. 2023

    A model of discontinuous learning

    In 2023, he publishes a PNAS paper showing how gradual reinforcement learning can produce discontinuous learning curves when agents learn direct routes through structured environments.

  6. 2023–2024

    An induction head in context

    His 2023 paper traces in-context learning to the abrupt emergence of an induction head that subsequently competes with in-weights learning; ICLR gives it an Honorable Mention in 2024.

  7. 2025

    A memorization scaling law

    In 2025, he and Alex Nguyen publish an ICLR paper that identifies a memorization scaling law for the task-diversity threshold at which a network generalizes.

  8. As of October 2026

    Assistant professor at Princeton

    In April 2026, he coauthors LENS, which identifies low-dimensional irreversible flows and estimates entropy production from high-dimensional time series. As of October 2026, he is an assistant professor of physics at Princeton University.

Career

  1. NowPrinceton UniversityAssistant professor
  2. From 2021NTT ResearchResearch scientist
  3. Harvard UniversityPostdoctoral fellow

Education

  1. 2019University of California, San DiegoPhD
  2. IIT Bombay

From the biography.

  1. 23% of people shaping AI who left a university for a company later returned to a universityIncludes Gautam Reddy. We estimate that 468 of the 2,011 people shaping AI who left a university for a company (23%) later returned to a university after a median of 5 years, and 163 of 829 (20%) made the reverse round trip.
  2. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Princeton University. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  3. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorateIncludes Princeton University. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorate. Across 2,116 people with both an undergraduate degree and a doctorate recorded, we trace which undergraduate schools feed which doctoral programs, how often students stay at the same school, and how paths differ by birth-country region.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Princeton University. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Gautam Reddy yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. UC San Diego - Massimo Vergassola Lab vergassolalab.ucsd.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. Glider soaring via reinforcement learning in the field nature.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. NTT Research PHI Lab Adds to its Scientific Staff ntt-research.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. LASSP & AEP Seminar: Gautam Reddy (Princeton) digitalagriculture.cornell.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. NTT Research Scientist Creates Model for Discontinuous Learning ntt-research.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. The mechanistic basis of data dependence and abrupt learning in an in-context classification task arxiv.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  7. ICLR 2024 Awards iclr.cc. Checked 22 October 2026.
  8. Differential learning kinetics govern the transition from memorization to generalization during in-context learning proceedings.iclr.cc. Checked 22 October 2026.
  9. Identifying nonequilibrium degrees of freedom in high-dimensional stochastic systems collaborate.princeton.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  10. People · Physics of Intelligence physicsintelligence.org. Checked 22 October 2026.