Akhila Yerukola
Hi! I am a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science in the Language Technologies Institute. I am fortunate to be advised by Maarten Sap. I am a recipient of the 2025-2026 K&L Gates Presidential Fellowship.
My research focuses on enhancing the reasoning and generation capabilities of AI systems across various contexts. The term "context" is often overloaded and can encompass local, global, and cultural factors. My goal is to improve the interaction experience for diverse groups of real-world users with technology.
→ Underspecification (Pragmatics) : Human communication often relies on unstated assumptions and contextual cues that remain implicit. I'm interested in improving how AI systems interpret these underlying user intentions and handle ambiguity to support effective communication.
→ Cross‑Cultural Safety and Understanding: Communication patterns, non-verbal cues, and social norms vary significantly across cultures. I'm interested in developing culturally contextual safety guardrails that enhance sensitivity and awareness of these nuanced cultural factors across multiple modalities.
Previously, I spent ~3 years working on improving fine-grained natural language understanding (NLU) for Bixby as a Senior Research Engineer at the AI Center in Samsung Research America (SRA), where I was advised by Hongxia Jin. Prior to that, I earned my Masters in Computer Science from Stanford University, where I was part of the Stanford NLP Group under the guidance of Chris Manning.
I completed my B.Tech in Computer Science from National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli (NIT Trichy), Tamil Nadu, India.
Email:
ayerukol [at] andrew.cmu.edu
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