Hi, I'm Aniket Vashishtha — a first-year thesis-based Master's student in Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where I'm fortunate to be advised by Prof. Hao Peng.

My research lies at the intersection of Large Language Models (LLMs), Causality, Reinforcement Learning, Fairness, and Cognitive Science. I'm particularly interested in understanding how LLM-based reasoning can be applied in real-world, high-stakes scenarios and I approach this problem through the lens of causality.

I explore how causal reasoning can both leverage and improve LLMs, enabling more robust and generalizable systems. My work focuses on understanding how to optimally utilize experts like LLMs (or humans) as domain experts for uncovering causal relationships for downstream tasks like effect estimation or counterfactual reasoning. I'm also drawn to the cognitive science perspective — investigating how concepts like human reasoning and inductive biases can shed light on the limitations of language models, and guide us toward building better ones. A major theme in my work has been training language models using synthetic data, with a focus on improving generalization to out-of-distribution settings.

Before UIUC, I was a Predoctoral Research Fellow at Microsoft Research India, where I was fortunate to be mentored by Amit Sharma and Prof. Vineeth N. Balasubramanian. I still continue to be mentored by them. At MSR, we worked on practical applications of LLMs for causal reasoning, including causal graph discovery, effect inference, and axiomatic causal reasoning of language models.

Earlier, I also had the opportunity to contribute to projects in Fairness and Responsible AI, working with Prof. Monojit Choudhury and Dr. Sunayana Sitaram. Our work focused on socio-cultural and multilingual challenges, aiming to extend RAI techniques to underrepresented languages, particularly in the Indian context.

Outside of research, I've been a passionate beatboxer for over 10 years, winning several national championships. I also enjoy working out, cooking, watching anime, movies, and stand-up comedy.

I graduated with a B.Tech (Hons.) in Information Technology from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi, India in 2022. For more details, check my CV or hit me up on my email.

Updates

Publications