Thanks for the insight! I have some friends that do computational fluid dynamics, with particle physics being similarly numerical, and was looking at physics-informed ML for my own particular area in quantum physics in a recent grant application in the hopes for funding to close the gap a bit myself. What is so powerful about ML and related statistical techniques is their versatility and genericity, so a project that can be benefited by that region of statistics tends not to be too far away. I will look into energy-based models, too.
His comment is quite good, I do work with physics informed ML for cfd and other dynamical systems (temperature, hydrology etc.), there is just a ton of opportunity and funding for this type of work in research. Coming from a typical physics education, where you’re learning quantum and Astro, and realizing that 90% of the physics funding from government is in the earth sciences and the related physics was eye opening. I felt shortchanged by my physics education not even including fluids etc.
It was the same here - fluid dynamics was an elective at my university as well (one I took, but still not core syllabus). I guess amount of funding for a domain depends strongly on impact, and in the earth sciences output is much more immediately tangible than uncovering another supremely true but at-the-time inapplicable pattern of physical behaviour in the quantum, or context to humanity in the astronomical or cosmological domains.
