Piero Giovanni Luca Porta-Mana

Field of work

If you're a student and have questions or curiosities about physics, maths, or probability theory; or if you're interested in pursuing some project related to them – then let's have a chat! Drop me a line.

I am a member of the Artificial Intelligence Engineering group at HVL.

Please see https://portamana.org  for research areas, CV, publications, teaching material.

"Finally, I said that I couldn't see how anyone could be educated by this self-propagating system in which people pass exams, and teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything."

"I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by understanding; they learn by some other way – by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!"

– Richard P. Feynman, 1985, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"

"Do we, in our schools and colleges, foster the spirit of inquiry, of skepticism, of adventurous thinking, of acquiring experience and reflecting on it? Or do we place a premium on docility, giving major recognition to the ability of the student to return verbatim in examinations that which he has been fed? [...] Do we really believe that science is the synthesis of human experience, gathered by all sincere individuals who practice Galileo's methods, or do we look on it as a compromise of human opinions based on the dialectic skill or social and political status of those who hold the opinions?"
– Ralph E. Gibson, 1964, "Our heritage from Galileo Galilei"

"In the popular treatise, whatever shreds of the science are allowed to appear, are exhibited in an exceedingly diffuse and attenuated form, apparently with the hope that the mental faculties of the reader, though they would reject any stronger food, may insensibly become saturated with scientific phraseology, provided it is diluted with a sufficient quantity of more familiar language. In this way, by simple reading, the student may become possessed of the phrases of the science without having been put to the trouble of thinking a single thought about it. The loss implied in such an acquisition can be estimated only by those who have been compelled to unlearn a science that they might at length begin to learn it."
– James Clerk Maxwell, 1878, "Tait's “Thermodynamics”''

Courses taught 

• Undergraduate physics: trying a new approach to give students a broader understanding of modern physics, and at the same time prepare them for an easier transition into specialized fields like continuum thermomechanics and fluid dynamics, relativity theory, nuclear physics, numerical-simulation methods.
  
  Draft of lecture notes:  The Seven Wonders of the World

• MSc course: ADA511: Data Science and AI prototyping
  
  Draft of lecture notes: Data Science and AI prototyping

Research areas

Research interests and activities in:

• general relativity
• continuum mechanics & thermodynamics
• quantum theory
• Bayesian probability theory, decision theory, machine learning
• statistical mechanics
• differential geometry (especially visual approaches to it)

Please see https://portamana.org for research areas, CV, publications, teaching material.