About Me

I am a Research Fellow at the Kempner Institute at Harvard University. I study the foundations of generative modeling and reasoning, focusing on sampling and probabilistic inference. My work draws on optimal transport theory and energy-based models.

I completed my PhD in AI at the University of Zurich and ETH AI Center, advised by Prof. Bjoern Menze. Previously, I was a Fellow at Harvard University (2023-2024) in Prof. Petros Koumoutsakos’s lab and worked at CERN (ATLAS), where I developed a machine-learning framework for collision-topology identification at the LHC.

I’m based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Email: m1balcerak[at]gmail.com

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CV · Personal Statement

News

Graph Energy Matching accepted at NeurIPS 2026

October 2026

I'll be presenting GEM in Sydney this December. See you there! / Project

Featured talk at Frontiers of Flows for Generative AI

March 2026

MFAI Workshop, Carnegie Mellon University / Workshop

Energy Matching reached 200 GitHub stars / Code

January 2026

Selected Publications

Graph Energy Matching: Transport-Aligned Energy-Based Modeling for Graph Generation

Michal Balcerak, Suprosanna Shit, Chinmay Prabhakar, Sebastian Kaltenbach, Michael S. Albergo, Yilun Du^†, Bjoern Menze^†

^† equal advising.

NeurIPS 2026 / Project / Paper / Code

Energy Matching: Unifying Flow Matching and Energy-Based Models for Generative Modeling

Michal Balcerak, Tamaz Amiranashvili, Antonio Terpin, Suprosanna Shit, Lea Bogensperger, Sebastian Kaltenbach, Petros Koumoutsakos, Bjoern Menze

NeurIPS 2025 / Paper / Code

Individualizing Glioma Radiotherapy Planning by Optimization of a Data- and Physics-Informed Discrete Loss

Michal Balcerak, Jonas Weidner, Petr Karnakov, Ivan Ezhov, Sergey Litvinov, Petros Koumoutsakos, Tamaz Amiranashvili, Ray Zirui Zhang, John S. Lowengrub, Igor Yakushev, Benedikt Wiestler^†, Bjoern Menze^†

^† equal advising.

Nature Communications 2025 / Paper / Code

Physics-Regularized Multi-Modal Image Assimilation for Brain Tumor Localization

Michal Balcerak, Tamaz Amiranashvili, Andreas Wagner, Jonas Weidner, Petr Karnakov, Johannes C. Paetzold, Ivan Ezhov, Petros Koumoutsakos, Benedikt Wiestler^†, Bjoern Menze^†

^† equal advising.

NeurIPS 2024 / Paper / Code