Warm congratulations to Dr. Yonatan Belinkov and Dr. Yaniv Romano on receiving the prestigious ERC Starting Grants from the European Commission for Research.
These grants are designed to assist young and promising scientists in advancing their research, building research teams, and pursuing bold and original ideas. Candidates are required to demonstrate potential for scientific breakthroughs, intense ambition, and feasibility in their research proposals.
Dr. Yonatan Blinov joined the faculty in October 2020 after completing his PhD at MIT and postdoctoral studies at Harvard and MIT. His research group aims to "open the black box" of artificial intelligence and understand how both proper and harmful behaviors are determined in AI systems. The group is working to bridge the gap between humans and machines using new tools for mapping, assessing, and controlling information processing in large language models—tools that will address challenges such as biases, misinformation, and privacy concerns. He received the grant to develop methods for understanding the internal mechanisms of large language models and enabling control over their operation for more useful, safe, and fair applications.
Dr. Yaniv Romano completed all his degrees at the Technion and returned to the faculty after a postdoctoral stint at Stanford University. Romano specializes in data science and computational learning, developing technology that ensures the reliability, accuracy, and stability of learning systems. His tools for uncertainty quantification were used by The Washington Post for reliable prediction of the 2020 US election results. He received the grant to develop defense systems that will improve the safety of computational learning systems.
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