Bio
I am a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, advised by Prof. Feizi and Prof. Hajiaghayi. My research focuses on the interpretability of generative AI models from both a model perspective—localizing knowledge within models, detecting, and explaining their failure modes—and a data perspective, analyzing the impact of individual data points on a model through challenges like unlearning and data selection for language model pretraining. Furthermore, I have proposed methods to integrate ads into the output of LLMs as a strategy to monetize them.
More about me
Outside of research, I’m usually on the soccer pitch or playing FIFA, exploring hiking trails, or diving into combinatorics puzzles. I also keep a close eye on global politics and social trends.
News
[Jun 26] Maryland Today covered our work on machine unlearning!
[Jun 26] I'll be joining Susquehanna International Group for Summer 2026, let's do some Finance!
[Jan 26] Our paper "Revisiting the Past: Data Unlearning with Model State History" is accepted to ICLR 2026.
[Sep 25] Our paper "Localizing Knowledge in Diffusion Transformers" is accepted to NeurIPS 2025.
[May 25] I'll be joining Adobe as a Research Intern for Summer 2025, working with the Document Intelligence Lab!
[Mar 25] Our paper "RESTOR: Knowledge Recovery via Machine Unlearning," has been accepted to Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR) 2025.
[Mar 25] Our paper "Online Advertisements with LLMs: Opportunities and Challenges" is accepted to ACM SIGecom Exchanges 2025.
[Jan 25] I'll be joining Google as Student Researcher for Spring 2025 to work on data selection in large language model pretraining.
[Nov 24]
See our blogpost on Mechanstic Interpretability Beyond Language Models!
[Sep 24] Our paper "Ad Auctions for LLMs via Retrieval Augmented Generation" is accepted to NeurIPS 2024.
[May 24] Our paper "On Mechanistic Knowledge Localization in Text-to-Image Generative Models" is accepted to ICML 2024.
[Mar 24] I will be joining MOSAIC at Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) as Research Intern in summer 2024!
[Jan 24] Our paper "PRIME: Prioritizing Interpretability in Failure Mode Extraction" is accepted to ICLR 2024.
[Jan 24] Our paper "Robustness of AI-Image Detectors: Fundamental Limits and Practical Attacks" is accepted to ICLR 2024.
[Dec 23] Our paper "Regret Analysis of Repeated Delegated Choice" is accepted to AAAI 2024.
[Nov 23] We posted our draft "Online Advertisements with LLMs: Opportunities and Challenges" on arXiv.
[Oct 23] Our work of Robustness of AI-Image Detectors is covered by
Register,
Wired, and
Arstechnica.
[May 23] Our team, UMD RED, ranked 3-rd in ICPC NAC 2023 and proceeded to ICPC World Finals 2023.
[May 23] Our paper "Delegating to Multiple Agents" is accepted to EC 2023.
[Apr 23] Our paper "Run-off Election: Improved Provable Defense against Data Poisoning Attacks" is accepted to ICML 2023.
[Apr 23] Our paper "Text-To-Concept (and Back) via Cross-Model Alignment" is accepted to ICML 2023.
[Feb 23] Our team, UMD RED, is qualified to compete in ICPC NAC 2023 at UCF.
Affiliation & Research
Reliable AI Lab, University of Maryland (Research Assistant)
09/22 – Now
Google Research (Student Researcher) — pretraining data selection
02/25 – 04/25
Susquehanna (SIG) (ML Research Intern) — data selection for intra-day price prediction
06/26 – 08/26
Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) (Research Intern) — data-level machine unlearning
05/24 – 10/24
Adobe Research (Research Intern) — text-to-diagram scientific visualization
05/25 – 08/25
TML Lab, EPFL (Research Intern) — SGD convergence rate
07/21 – 09/21
Publications
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ICLR
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2026. -
TMLR
Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR), 2025 -
ACM
-
ICML
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2024. -
NeurIPS
Neural Information Processing Systems. (NeurIPS), 2025. -
ICLR
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2024. -
ICML
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2023. -
NeurIPS
Neural Information Processing Systems. (NeurIPS), 2024. -
ICML
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2023. -
ICLR
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2024. -
EC
-
AAAI
The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2024.
arXiv
α, β denotes alphabetical order of authorship.
* denotes equal contribution.
Competitive Programming
ICPC
- Finalist2023ICPC World Finalist (no attend due visa issues)
- 3rd20233rd Place, ICPC NAC
- 33rd202033rd Place, ICPC World Finals
- 1st20191st Place, Asian Regional Contest
- 2nd20182nd Place, Asian Regional Contest
Olympiad in Informatics
- Silver2018Silver Medal, IOI
- Silver2018Silver Medal, APIO
- Gold2017Gold Medal, Iranian National Olympiad
- Silver2016Silver Medal, Iranian National Olympiad
Services
Conference Reviewers
- ICML2025International Conference on Machine Learning
- UAI2025The Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence
- NeurIPS2023Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems
- ICLR2024International Conference on Learning Representations
- AAAI2025The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
- ICLR2025International Conference on Learning Representations
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