Keyon VafaView profile
Research Fellow
Keyon Vafa is a Research Fellow at Harvard University's Harvard Data Science Initiative (HDSI) and an affiliate at MIT's LIDS. He completed his PhD in Computer Science at Columbia University (advisor: David Blei), where he held NSF GRFP and Cheung-Kong Fellowships. His work focuses on behavioral machine learning, evaluating AI models' world understanding, and fostering human-AI alignment. He received the 2023 Morton B. Friedman Memorial Prize for engineering excellence. Education PhD in Computer Science, Columbia University, 2023 Bachelor's/Master's degrees (not explicitly stated in text) Research Interests Behavioral machine learning and model interpretability Ethical AI and algorithmic fairness Applications of generative models in social sciences Large language model evaluation and societal impact Publications His recent work includes studies on wage disparity estimation via foundation models, evaluating implicit world models of AI systems, and measuring human-AI expectation alignment. These contributions span top venues like PNAS, NeurIPS, and ICML, addressing critical issues in AI ethics and social science applications. Awards NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) Cheung-Kong Innovation Doctoral Fellowship Morton B. Friedman Memorial Prize (2023) Grants & Labs Organizes the ICML 2025 Workshop on Assessing World Models of AI systems. His research is supported by grants from the NSF and other institutions. He collaborates with economists and social scientists to bridge AI and societal challenges.






.jpg)





