- Graduate Field Affiliations
- Applied Information Systems
- Applied Mathematics
- Civil and Environmental Engineering
- Computational Science and Engineering (minor)
- Mathematics
- Physics
- Systems Engineering
- Theoretical and Applied Mechanics
Biography
Earls is a faculty member in the Complex Systems and Engineering concentration. He is interested in Scientific Artificial Intelligence (SciAI) and Inverse Problems.
Research Interests
Earls’ research is concerned with developing novel mathematical and computational approaches that enable deep understanding of natural and engineered systems. Practical challenges involving the principled treatment of uncertainty, sparse sensing, and intrinsic complexity are motivational to his work.
The intellectual themes that underpin his research are applied mathematics, artificial intelligence, and scientific computing. Problems of interest to Earls occur within the domains of engineering and applied science.
- Computer Aided Diagnosis
- Scientific Computing
- Complex Systems, Network Science and Computation
Teaching Interests
Earls teaches course on mathematical modeling and inverse problems.
Service Interests
Earls is a lifetime member of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
Select Publications
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Liu, T., Boullé, N., Sarfati, R., Earls, C.J., 2025 “Density estimation with LLMs: a geometric investigation of in-context learning trajectories,” International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR).
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Sarfati, R., Liu, T., Boullé, N., Earls, C.J., 2025 “Lines of Thought in Large Language Models,” International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR).
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Liu, T., Boullé, N., Sarfati, R., Earls, C.J., 2024 “LLMs learn governing principles of dynamical systems, revealing an in-context neural scaling law,” Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP).
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Select Awards and Honors
- Outstanding Young Alumni Award (The Charles E. Via Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech) 2004
- Outstanding Professor of the Year Award (American Society of Civil Engineers, Pittsburgh Section) 2001
- James and Mary Tien Excellence in Teaching Award(Cornell University College of Engineering) 2016
- Peter S. Michie Outstanding Teacher Award (West Point) 1998
- Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award (Oak Ridge Associated Universities) 2000
Education
- B.S. (Civil Engineering), Virginia Tech 1990
- M.S. (Civil Engineering), Virginia Tech 1992
- Ph.D. (Civil Engineering), University of Minnesota 1995