Nikhil Anand
Senior ML Research Scientist
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About
Nikhil Anand joined the Kempner Institute Research and Engineering team as a Senior Research Scientist in July 2024. Previously, he was a research scientist at Amazon, where he developed methods to select high-quality training data for large language models and improved models’ capabilities in API and tool usage. He has also worked on operational aspects of deploying production language models, and drove multiple applied research science initiatives to improve user experience.
Anand completed his Ph.D. in physics in 2018 at Johns Hopkins University, specializing in theoretical and numerical methods to understand the dynamics of strongly coupled quantum mechanical systems. He completed a Simons Foundation postdoctoral fellowship in 2021, also in theoretical physics and was briefly a visiting researcher at MILA.
Research Focus
Anand is currently interested in better understanding how large foundation models work, as well as making them more capable and efficient. As part of the Kempner’s Research and Engineering team, he works closely with the institute’s PIs, scholars, and engineers to develop research questions and create engineering infrastructure to carry out experiments. Previously, he worked on the science of deep learning and in theoretical physics, and still maintains interest in those topics.