Language and Information Processing Lab
Postdocs
Research Fellow in Machine Cognition
Open position

I will soon be hiring a Research Fellow in Machine Cognition for a two-year position at UCL. The project will combine interpretability methods with behavioural evaluations to investigate how goals and beliefs are represented in language model agents, and whether these representations can be reliably extracted and manipulated. More details will be shared soon; in the meantime, please feel free to get in touch if you are interested.

PhD Students
Francesco Cipriani
Francesco Cipriani
Starting in October 2026
Guanming Liu
Guanming Liu
Visiting from Fudan University
Dynamic user modelling in human-LLM interaction
Leo Richter
Leo Richter
Co-supervised with Matt Kusner and Brooks Paige
Science of AI evaluation
Daniel Tan
Daniel Tan
Co-supervised with Brooks Paige and Dimitrios Kanoulas
LLM generalisation for AI safety
JP
Joseph Petrie
Thesis committee - Main supervisor: Richard Breheny
ZW
Zichao Wang
Thesis committee - Main supervisor: Wing Yee Chow
Students
Tommaso Morini Bianzino
Tommaso Morini Bianzino
MSc Cognitive and Decision Sciences, UCL
Causal narrative understanding in humans vs. LLMs
JC
Jiayi Chen
MA Computational Linguistics, UCL
Alternative training objectives for language models
Joshua Hew
Joshua Hew
MSc Cognitive and Decision Sciences, UCL
Goal inference and deception detection in LLM agents
Aoxuan Liang
Aoxuan Liang
MA Computational Linguistics, UCL
Resilience of LM agents to conversational disturbances
AP
Alice Paulton
BA Linguistics, UCL
LLM sensitivity to Gricean maxims in comprehension and production tasks
NS
Noor Saleh
MA Computational Linguistics, UCL
Detecting machine-generated text via information contours
Caroline Swartz
Caroline Swartz
MA Computational Linguistics, UCL
Pragmatic force contrasts across speech and text encoders
Chenchang Xu
Chenchang Xu
MA Computational Linguistics, UCL
Metaphor modelling via incremental alternative sampling
Hannie Xu
Hannie Xu
MA Computational Linguistics, UCL
Interactive feedback mechanisms for LLM post-training
Yuyang Yang
Yuyang Yang
MA Computational Linguistics, UCL
Evaluating pragmatic inference via multi-agent dialogue games
Zhaoxi Zeng
Zhaoxi Zeng
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, visiting from Tsinghua University
Sampling strategies in active probabilistic inference
SPAR Mentees
Raghu Arghal
Raghu Arghal
PhD in AI and Game Theory, University of Pennsylvania
Goal-directedness, Belief-action gap
Fade Chen
Fade Chen
PhD in Cognitive Science, New York University
Goal-directedness
Niall Dalton
Niall Dalton
MSc in Machine Learning, University College London
Goal-directedness, Belief-action gap
Evgenii Kortukov
Evgenii Kortukov
PhD in Explainable AI, Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institut
Goal-directedness
Calum McNamara
Calum McNamara
Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Indiana University Bloomington
Goal-directedness
Angelos Nalmpantis
Angelos Nalmpantis
AI Research Engineer, TKH AI
Goal-directedness, Belief-action gap
Moksh Nirvaan
Moksh Nirvaan
ML Engineer, Amazon Search
Goal-directedness
Ayse Sila Okcu
Ayse Sila Okcu
PhD in Electrical Engineering, University of Cambridge
Belief-action gap
Weisheng Wang
Weisheng Wang
PhD in Mathematics, Utrecht University
Belief-action gap
Tongmeng Xie
Tongmeng Xie
ML Researcher, Algoverse
Belief-action gap
Collaborators
Gonçalo Guiomar
Gonçalo Guiomar
Research Fellow at ETH AI Center and UZH-ETH Institute of Neuroinformatics
Gabriele Sarti
Gabriele Sarti
Postdoc at Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University
Arabella Sinclair
Arabella Sinclair
Lecturer in Knowledge, Information and Data Science, University College London