About Paolo Rissone

I joined the Hocky Group as a postdoctoral associate in September 2026. My research focuses on developing physics-inspired computational methods for optimization and inference in complex systems. In particular, I am interested in how frustration, correlations, and collective interactions shape rugged energy landscapes, and in using these structures to design algorithms that can efficiently explore them. I am currently working in collaboration with Pilar Cossio at the Center for Computational Biology at the Flatiron Institute. Before joining NYU, I was a postdoctoral researcher at Sapienza University of Rome, where I worked with Prof. Federico Ricci-Tersenghi on developing physics-inspired optimization algorithms for systems with frustrated interactions. I received my Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Barcelona, where I studied the thermodynamics and kinetics of DNA and RNA folding using single-molecule experiments.