A Reflection on CSU Academic and Research experience from a CSU Physics and Math alumnus, Niksa Praljak ’20.

Thanks to the rigorous environment that the CSU’s Physics department provides, specifically for physics research and problem-solving using first principles, I was awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowship in 2020 as an undergraduate, which allowed me to freely and financially explore research projects at the University of Chicago graduate student at the intersection of physics and biology. Additionally, the research experience during CSU’s REU Soft Matter program gave me the tools to win fellowships and small grants, publish peer-reviewed papers, and present my research to a broader audience. The skills acquired during the SPS educational outreaches and collaborative endeavors allowed me to easily apply them to pedagogical outreaches and mentoring at the University of Chicago. While my main topic as my research program begins to form a shape is the interface of generative AI and biology, both synthetic and natural, my current research focuses on developing novel generative AI methods specifically tailored for protein design. A crucial aspect of this work involves experimentally validating these computationally generated designs through high-throughput assays. Furthermore, I am extending these generative approaches by developing algorithms that leverage language models, enabling textual description prompts to guide functional protein design.     

           Looking ahead, I plan to broaden the application of these AI techniques beyond proteins to other biological modalities, including genomes and cell states. So, in a potentially questionable career move, I've cheerfully ditched the physicist's quest for neat, analytical formulas explaining projectiles and planets, choosing instead to feed computational beasts massive amounts of data and hope they dream up useful biology. The Physics Department has created the bedrock for me to solve problems with first principles.”

Niksa Praljok graduated as Summa Cum Laude from CSU's Jack, Joseph & Morton Mandel Honors College with BS Honors degrees in Physics and Math in the Spring 2020. While being an undergraduate he performed research with Dr. Resnick (Physics, CSU - as part of CSU’s REU), Dr. Ryan (Math, CSU), and Dr. Hinczewski (Physics, CWRU). Niksa presented his research at the OSAPS at Kettering, at the APS March Meeting in Boston, and to SPS at CSU. His research was published in 2 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to his academic and research successes, he helped the Society of Physics Students (SPS) physics outreach effort (Physics Fridays) at Campus International School and served as the SPS-Math Club liaison, organizing SPS seminars and Physics Olympics. Niksa was chosen as the Spring 2020 COSHP Valedictorian. 

In November 2025, Niksa defended his Biophysics PhD thesis titled “Molecular Dialogues: Guiding Protein Design through Natural Language Prompts” at the University of Chicago. In his PhD research Niksa worked on developing advanced generative AI models to discover the rules linking protein sequence to their function, with a goal bringing closer the design of new proteins with specific properties. His research was highlighted in the University of Chicago’s Data Science Institute Newsletter ( https://datascience.uchicago.edu/research/discovering-the-design-rules-…).

Niksa recently began working as Machine Learning Scientist at Lila Sciences in San Francisco, CA. His research focuses on generative biology, biomolecule design, and scientific superintelligence.