Yves Martin
“You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” - Peter Drucker
I model the world - weather, RNA, and soft robots - and build things on the side.
Research: Weather
I work at the intersection of AI and physics, developing AI models for global and regional forecasts, and more. Sadly, the exciting research we do at Atmo isn't public.
Research: RNA
RNA is a programmable polymer - a chain of nucleotides that folds via base-pairing and stacking. Its structure - secondary (pairs and loops) and tertiary (3D shape) - governs function in gene regulation, translation, and viral replication. Modeling RNA structure helps interpret experiments and design sequences with desired behaviors.
eFold: an AI model to predict the RNA structure Paper Code Data
The effort expands training diversity and introduces eFold, an AlphaFold-inspired architecture adapted to RNA. By mixing probing-backed structures and synthetic constructs, the model reduces overfitting to short/simple motifs and improves long/complex sequence performance.
SEISMIC - DMS-MaPseq processing and DREEM clustering Code
DMS-MaPseq is a chemical probing method where dimethyl sulfate modifies flexible A and C bases. During reverse transcription, these modifications cause characteristic mutations, so sequencing yields per-nucleotide reactivity that reports local structure. RNAs often adopt multiple conformations at the same time, so different reads reflect different folds. Clustering reads by shared mutation patterns separates co-existing structures into ensembles instead of averaging them, which makes downstream modeling more accurate. SEISMIC computes these reactivities and performs clustering at scale.
Research: Soft robotics
Rapid prototyping and modeling: IMU-based proprioception for long soft arms and data-driven origami kinematics.
IMU proprioception for soft arms - IROS 2022 Paper Code
An 80-cm hyper-redundant arm instrumented with IMUs along its body. Orientation chains fuse gyro/accel with a geometric prior to reconstruct shape, reaching >90% accuracy at low cost and minimal calibration.
Double-Waterbomb origami kinematics Paper
A rigid panels + flexible hinges mechanism with hidden DOFs. A data-driven model maps actuator states to pose for control without deriving full analytical kinematics on the multilink structure.
Personal projects
Just a few things I've built for fun.
ATPen - mechanical low-pass filter for tremor
A pen with a tuned mass/suspension that attenuates high-frequency hand tremors while passing intentional low-frequency motion, improving handwriting legibility. Built via iterative FEM-guided design and patient tests. Pitch · Press
Snap-off mechanism knife
A machined aluminum/steel utility knife with a spring-latched rotating bar that locks the blade open/closed. Depressing the spring disengages the latch to re-position the blade; locks snap in at end stops.
Smart mirror - bathroom health mirror
A wall mirror with embedded camera and UI widgets captures daily frames and plays a fast-forward of appearance changes, alongside health metrics and goals.
Capacitive touch light switch
An electric paint surface with a capacitive touch sensor, connected to a microcontroller and a connected bulb. When touched, the light turns on.
SubliminAI - ControlNet images with hidden messages
The system encodes a user word into a black-white map used as seed/control for a diffusion model via ControlNet, steering images to subtly contain the text. Prompt reformulations generate frames stitched into a GIF.
AI agents playing Flappy Bird
An AI agent playing flappy bird. The agent was trained with Reinforcement Learning. The players are the followers of @flappy_nerd_ai on Instagram.
Manifesto
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” - Stephen Hawking.
I pledge to bow my convictions to evidence and reason and not to my interests. I believe that humility and truth-seeking is the ultimate pathway to peace, justice and prosperity in the world. I believe in the right to admit being wrong. Rationalism is a humanism.