Akhila Yerukola
Hi! I am a third-year 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.
My research focuses on enhancing the reasoning and generation capabilities of language models 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.
Currently, I've been interested in two research areas:
→ pragmatics: I'm interested in better interpreting underlying user intentions and questions that go beyond explicit statements.
→ cross-cultural safety and understanding: I'm interested in studying AI systems' sensitivity, safety and awareness of various nuances of culture across multiple modalities -- moving beyond the commonly studied issues of coverage and diversity.
I have ~2.8 years experience 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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