Social
HokieTokie.png

Team HokieTokie

We are committed to advancing AI by developing code-generating LLMs that balance innovation, security, and reliability. Our goal is to create a system that adapts to emerging challenges while maintaining strong functionality, demonstrating that safety and utility can work together to drive responsible technology development for the benefit of society.

By Virginia Tech
4 min read
Share

Yi Zeng - Team leader

Yi Zeng is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech under the supervision of Prof. Ruoxi Jia. His research focuses on AI safety and responsibility. Zeng has an extensive publication history in leading security and responsible AI venues, including USENIX Security, ACM CCS, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ICCV, ACL, AsiaCCS, IJCAI, and TMLR. He obtained his Masters from UC San Diego and Bachelors from Xidian University. Zeng has industry experience interning at Meta and Sony AI, where he worked on techniques for responsible AI and security. His research has been featured in high-profile media outlets such as the New York Times, PCmag, the Register, and VentureBeat. Zeng's honors include the Best Social Impact Award from the ACL 2024, the Amazon Research Fellowship, and the Best Paper award at ICA3PP 2020.

Mahavir Dabas

Mahavir Dabas is a Masters student in Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech under Prof. Ruoxi Jia. He obtained his Bachelor's from the Indian Institute of Information Technology. Dabas has worked at ZS Associates as an NLP intern and at IIT Mandi as a Research Intern, focusing on combining reinforcement learning with cognitive science. He has also served as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech. Currently, he works as a Graduate Research Assistant at the Responsible Data Science Laboratory at VT, focusing on the safety of large language models.

Adam Nguyen

Adam Nguyen is a third-year undergraduate student in Computer Science at Virginia Tech working under Prof. Ruoxi Jia's supervision. His research focuses on improving Large Language Model capabilities and reliability. He previously interned at Raytheon Technologies as a software engineer, developing enterprise software solutions. Currently, he is an Undergraduate Research Assistant in the Responsible Data Science Laboratory, contributing to research projects and building automated pipelines for experiments.

Tran Huynh

Tran Huynh is a first-year Ph.D. student in Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech, working under the supervision of Prof. Ruoxi Jia. She earned her Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Vietnam National University. Huynh's research centers on AI safety, with her works published in venues including ECCV, AAAI, and EMNLP. She is currently a Research Assistant in the Responsible Data Science Laboratory at Virginia Tech, focusing on enhancing the safety alignment of large language models.

Sanchit Kabra

Sanchit is a first year Masters of Science in Computer Science student working under supervision of Prof. Rouxi Jia and Prof Chandan Reddy. He earned his Bachelors in CS from BITS Pilani, India. Kabra’s research centers around Responsible AI with a focus on evaluation and robustness. He has previously interned at Aalto University focusing on extreme classification. Currently, he is a Graduate Research Assistant at CS department working on concept alignment in multimodal models and code tasks on semi structured data.

Nikhil Reddy Billa

Nikhil is a first year Masters student in Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech working under Prof. Ruoxi Jia. He earned his Bachelors from National Institute of Technology Rourkela. Nikhil has worked as Software Engineer at NCR Corporation and ML Research Assistant at IIIT Hyderabad, focusing on Autonomous navigation in unstructured traffic and Adversarial Weather. Currently he is Graduate Research Assistant at Responsible Data Science Lab at VT, focusing on privacy in LLMs.

Bhuvishi Bansal

Bhuvishi Bansal is a Computer Science freshman at Virginia Tech, specializing in natural language processing (NLP) and the empirical evaluation of large language models. Her research explores bias detection, robustness analysis, and parameter-driven performance assessment, with a strong focus on enhancing the safety, fairness, and reliability of LLMs in real-world applications.

Rohan Praveen Chavan

Rohan Chavan is first year Masters of Science in Computer Engineering student. He has earned his Bachelors in IT from K.J. Somaiya College of Engineering, India. He has previously worked as a Intern at Colgate Palmolive Global Business Services, as an Robotic Process Automation developer where he helped the team to develop their inhouse LLM and also facilitated the integration of this LLM into their chatbot ecosystem. He is currently working for the Responsible Data Science Lab under guidance of Professor Ruxoi Jia on AI safety and safer, robust code generation by Large Language Models.

Ruoxi Jia - Faculty advisor

Ruoxi Jia is an assistant professor in the the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech. She earned her PhD in the EECS Department from UC Berkeley and a B.S. from Peking University. Jia's recent work focuses on data-centric and trustworthy machine learning. Jia is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the Dean's Award for Outstanding New Assistant Professor, the Chiang Fellowship for Graduate Scholars in Manufacturing and Engineering, the 8108 Alumni Fellowship, and the Okamatsu Fellowship, Cisco Research Awards, Amazon-VT Initiative Research Awards, and the Best Social Impact Paper Award at ACL 2024. She was selected for the Rising Stars in EECS in 2017. Jia’s work has been featured in multiple media outlets such as MIT Technology Review, New York Times, IEEE Spectrum, and Wired. Her work has been adopted in the financial sector and tech companies.

About the Author
Virginia Tech

Related content

Work with us

See more jobs See more jobs
Member of Technical Staff, Engineering Manager , Amazon AGI Lab
US, CA, San Francisco
Amazon launched the AGI Lab to develop foundational capabilities for useful AI agents. We built Nova Act - a new AI model trained to perform actions within a web browser. The team builds AI/ML infrastructure that powers our production systems to run performantly at high scale. We’re also enabling practical AI to make our customers more productive, empowered, and fulfilled. In particular, our work combines large language models (LLMs) with reinforcement learning (RL) to solve reasoning, planning, and world modeling in both virtual and physical environments. Our lab is a small, talent-dense team with the resources and scale of Amazon. Each team in the lab has the autonomy to move fast and the long-term commitment to pursue high-risk, high-payoff research. We’re entering an exciting new era where agents can redefine what AI makes possible. We’d love for you to join our lab and build it from the ground up! Key job responsibilities This role will lead a team of SDEs building AI agents infrastructure from launch to scale. The role requires the ability to span across ML/AI system architecture and infrastructure. You will work closely with application developers and scientists to have a impact on the Agentic AI industry. We're looking for a Software Development Manager who is energized by building high performance systems, making an impact and thrives in fast-paced, collaborative environments. About the team Check out the Nova Act tools our team built on on nova.amazon.com/act
Data Scientist, AWS Quick Data
US, CA, Santa Clara
Amazon Quick Suite is an enterprise AI platform that transforms how organizations work with their data and knowledge. Combining generative AI-powered search, deep research capabilities, intelligent agents and automations, and comprehensive business intelligence, Quick Suite serves tens of thousands of users. Our platform processes thousands of queries monthly, helping teams make faster, data-driven decisions while maintaining enterprise-grade security and governance. From natural language interactions with complex datasets to automated workflows and custom AI agents, Quick Suite is redefining workplace productivity at unprecedented scale. We are seeking a Data Scientist II to join our Quick Data team, focusing on evaluation and benchmarking data development for Quick Suite features, with particular emphasis on Research and other generative AI capabilities. Our mission is to engineer high-quality datasets that are essential to the success of Amazon Quick Suite. From human evaluations and Responsible AI safeguards to Retrieval-Augmented Generation and beyond, our work ensures that Generative AI is enterprise-ready, safe, and effective for users at scale. As part of our diverse team—including data scientists, engineers, language engineers, linguists, and program managers—you will collaborate closely with science, engineering, and product teams. We are driven by customer obsession and a commitment to excellence. Key job responsibilities In this role, you will leverage data-centric AI principles to assess the impact of data on model performance and the broader machine learning pipeline. You will apply Generative AI techniques to evaluate how well our data represents human language and conduct experiments to measure downstream interactions. Specific responsibilities include: * Design and develop comprehensive evaluation and benchmarking datasets for Quick Suite AI-powered features * Leverage LLMs for synthetic data corpora generation; data evaluation and quality assessment using LLM-as-a-judge settings * Create ground truth datasets with high-quality question-answer pairs across diverse domains and use cases * Lead human annotation initiatives and model evaluation audits to ensure data quality and relevance * Develop and refine annotation guidelines and quality frameworks for evaluation tasks * Conduct statistical analysis to measure model performance, identify failure patterns, and guide improvement strategies * Collaborate with ML scientists and engineers to translate evaluation insights into actionable product improvements * Build scalable data pipelines and tools to support continuous evaluation and benchmarking efforts * Contribute to Responsible AI initiatives by developing safety and fairness evaluation datasets About the team Why AWS? Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating — that’s why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses. Inclusive Team Culture Here at AWS, it’s in our nature to learn and be curious. Our employee-led affinity groups foster a culture of inclusion that empower us to be proud of our differences. Ongoing events and learning experiences, including our Conversations on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) and AmazeCon conferences, inspire us to never stop embracing our uniqueness. Mentorship & Career Growth We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional. Work/Life Balance We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why we strive for flexibility as part of our working culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve in the cloud. Hybrid Work We value innovation and recognize this sometimes requires uninterrupted time to focus on a build. We also value in-person collaboration and time spent face-to-face. Our team affords employees options to work in the office every day or in a flexible, hybrid work model near one of our U.S. Amazon offices.
Data Scientist II, FinAuto
IN, KA, Bengaluru
Interested to build the next generation Financial systems that can handle billions of dollars in transactions? Interested to build highly scalable next generation systems that could utilize Amazon Cloud? Massive data volume + complex business rules in a highly distributed and service oriented architecture, a world class information collection and delivery challenge. Our challenge is to deliver the software systems which accurately capture, process, and report on the huge volume of financial transactions that are generated each day as millions of customers make purchases, as thousands of Vendors and Partners are paid, as inventory moves in and out of warehouses, as commissions are calculated, and as taxes are collected in hundreds of jurisdictions worldwide. Key job responsibilities • Understand the business and discover actionable insights from large volumes of data through application of machine learning, statistics or causal inference. • Analyse and extract relevant information from large amounts of Amazon’s historical transactions data to help automate and optimize key processes • Research, develop and implement novel machine learning and statistical approaches for anomaly, theft, fraud, abusive and wasteful transactions detection. • Use machine learning and analytical techniques to create scalable solutions for business problems. • Identify new areas where machine learning can be applied for solving business problems. • Partner with developers and business teams to put your models in production. • Mentor other scientists and engineers in the use of ML techniques. A day in the life • Understand the business and discover actionable insights from large volumes of data through application of machine learning, statistics or causal inference. • Analyse and extract relevant information from large amounts of Amazon’s historical transactions data to help automate and optimize key processes • Research, develop and implement novel machine learning and statistical approaches for anomaly, theft, fraud, abusive and wasteful transactions detection. • Use machine learning and analytical techniques to create scalable solutions for business problems. • Identify new areas where machine learning can be applied for solving business problems. • Partner with developers and business teams to put your models in production. • Mentor other scientists and engineers in the use of ML techniques. About the team The FinAuto TFAW(theft, fraud, abuse, waste) team is part of FGBS Org and focuses on building applications utilizing machine learning models to identify and prevent theft, fraud, abusive and wasteful(TFAW) financial transactions across Amazon. Our mission is to prevent every single TFAW transaction. As a Machine Learning Scientist in the team, you will be driving the TFAW Sciences roadmap, conduct research to develop state-of-the-art solutions through a combination of data mining, statistical and machine learning techniques, and coordinate with Engineering team to put these models into production. You will need to collaborate effectively with internal stakeholders, cross-functional teams to solve problems, create operational efficiencies, and deliver successfully against high organizational standards.
Applied Scientist, FinAuto
IN, KA, Bengaluru
Interested to build the next generation Financial systems that can handle billions of dollars in transactions? Interested to build highly scalable next generation systems that could utilize Amazon Cloud? Massive data volume + complex business rules in a highly distributed and service oriented architecture, a world class information collection and delivery challenge. Our challenge is to deliver the software systems which accurately capture, process, and report on the huge volume of financial transactions that are generated each day as millions of customers make purchases, as thousands of Vendors and Partners are paid, as inventory moves in and out of warehouses, as commissions are calculated, and as taxes are collected in hundreds of jurisdictions worldwide. Key job responsibilities • Understand the business and discover actionable insights from large volumes of data through application of machine learning, statistics or causal inference. • Analyse and extract relevant information from large amounts of Amazon’s historical transactions data to help automate and optimize key processes • Research, develop and implement novel machine learning and statistical approaches for anomaly, theft, fraud, abusive and wasteful transactions detection. • Use machine learning and analytical techniques to create scalable solutions for business problems. • Identify new areas where machine learning can be applied for solving business problems. • Partner with developers and business teams to put your models in production. • Mentor other scientists and engineers in the use of ML techniques. A day in the life • Understand the business and discover actionable insights from large volumes of data through application of machine learning, statistics or causal inference. • Analyse and extract relevant information from large amounts of Amazon’s historical transactions data to help automate and optimize key processes • Research, develop and implement novel machine learning and statistical approaches for anomaly, theft, fraud, abusive and wasteful transactions detection. • Use machine learning and analytical techniques to create scalable solutions for business problems. • Identify new areas where machine learning can be applied for solving business problems. • Partner with developers and business teams to put your models in production. • Mentor other scientists and engineers in the use of ML techniques. About the team The FinAuto TFAW(theft, fraud, abuse, waste) team is part of FGBS Org and focuses on building applications utilizing machine learning models to identify and prevent theft, fraud, abusive and wasteful(TFAW) financial transactions across Amazon. Our mission is to prevent every single TFAW transaction. As a Machine Learning Scientist in the team, you will be driving the TFAW Sciences roadmap, conduct research to develop state-of-the-art solutions through a combination of data mining, statistical and machine learning techniques, and coordinate with Engineering team to put these models into production. You will need to collaborate effectively with internal stakeholders, cross-functional teams to solve problems, create operational efficiencies, and deliver successfully against high organizational standards.
Applied Scientist II, HST Health Evaluation
IN, KA, Bengaluru
Amazon Health Services (One Medical) About Us: At Health AI, we're revolutionizing healthcare delivery through innovative AI-enabled solutions. As part of Amazon Health Services and One Medical, we're on a mission to make quality healthcare more accessible while improving patient outcomes. Our work directly impacts millions of lives by empowering patients and enabling healthcare providers to deliver more meaningful care. Role Overview: We're seeking an Applied Scientist to join our dynamic team in building state of the art AI/ML solutions for healthcare. This role offers a unique opportunity to work at the intersection of artificial intelligence and healthcare, developing solutions that will shape the future of medical services delivery. Key job responsibilities • Lead end-to-end development of AI/ML solutions for Amazon Health organization, including Amazon Pharmacy and One Medical • Research, design, and implement state-of-the-art machine learning models, with a focus on Large Language Models (LLMs) and Visual Language Models (VLMs) • Optimize and fine-tune models for production deployment, including model distillation for improved latency • Drive scientific innovation while maintaining a strong focus on practical business outcomes • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to translate complex technical solutions into tangible customer benefits • Contribute to the broader Amazon Health scientific community and help shape our technical roadmap
Mixed Signal Design Engineer, Amazon Center for Quantum Computing
US, CA, Pasadena
The Amazon Center for Quantum Computing in Pasadena, CA, is looking to hire an Applied Scientist specializing in Mixed-Signal Design. Working alongside other scientists and engineers, you will design and validate hardware performing the control and readout functions for AWS quantum processors. Candidates must have a solid background in mixed-signal design at the printed circuit board (PCB) level. Working effectively within a cross-functional team environment is critical. The ideal candidate will have demonstrated the capability to contribute to all phases of product life cycle development, from requirements gathering to verification. Diverse Experiences Amazon values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the preferred qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying. Work/Life Balance We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why we strive for flexibility as part of our working culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve in the cloud. Inclusive Team Culture Here at Amazon, it’s in our nature to learn and be curious. Our employee-led affinity groups foster a culture of inclusion that empower us to be proud of our differences. Ongoing events and learning experiences, including our Conversations on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) and AmazeCon (gender diversity) conferences, inspire us to never stop embracing our uniqueness. Mentorship and Career Growth We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional. Key job responsibilities Our scientists and engineers collaborate across diverse teams and projects to offer state of the art, cost effective solutions for the control of Amazon quantum processor systems. You’ll bring a passion for innovation, collaboration, and mentoring to: Solve layered technical problems, often ones not encountered before, across our hardware stack. Develop requirements with key system stakeholders, including quantum device, test and measurement, and cryogenic hardware teams. Design, implement, test, deploy, and maintain innovative solutions that meet both strict performance and cost metrics. Research enabling control system technologies necessary for Amazon to produce commercially viable quantum computers.
Applied Scientist, Artificial General Intelligence, AGI Data Services
US, MA, Boston
The Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team is seeking a dedicated, skilled, and innovative Applied Scientist with a robust background in machine learning, statistics, quality assurance, auditing methodologies, and automated evaluation systems to ensure the highest standards of data quality, to build industry-leading technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal systems. Key job responsibilities As part of the AGI team, an Applied Scientist will collaborate closely with core scientist team developing Amazon Nova models. They will lead the development of comprehensive quality strategies and auditing frameworks that safeguard the integrity of data collection workflows. This includes designing auditing strategies with detailed SOPs, quality metrics, and sampling methodologies that help Nova improve performances on benchmarks. The Applied Scientist will perform expert-level manual audits, conduct meta-audits to evaluate auditor performance, and provide targeted coaching to uplift overall quality capabilities. A critical aspect of this role involves developing and maintaining LLM-as-a-Judge systems, including designing judge architectures, creating evaluation rubrics, and building machine learning models for automated quality assessment. The Applied Scientist will also set up the configuration of data collection workflows and communicate quality feedback to stakeholders. An Applied Scientist will also have a direct impact on enhancing customer experiences through high-quality training and evaluation data that powers state-of-the-art LLM products and services. A day in the life An Applied Scientist with the AGI team will support quality solution design, conduct root cause analysis on data quality issues, research new auditing methodologies, and find innovative ways of optimizing data quality while setting examples for the team on quality assurance best practices and standards. Besides theoretical analysis and quality framework development, an Applied Scientist will also work closely with talented engineers, domain experts, and vendor teams to put quality strategies and automated judging systems into practice.
Applied Scientist, Artificial General Intelligence, AGI Data Services
US, MA, Boston
The Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team is seeking a dedicated, skilled, and innovative Applied Scientist with a robust background in machine learning, statistics, quality assurance, auditing methodologies, and automated evaluation systems to ensure the highest standards of data quality, to build industry-leading technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal systems. Key job responsibilities As part of the AGI team, an Applied Scientist will collaborate closely with core scientist team developing Amazon Nova models. They will lead the development of comprehensive quality strategies and auditing frameworks that safeguard the integrity of data collection workflows. This includes designing auditing strategies with detailed SOPs, quality metrics, and sampling methodologies that help Nova improve performances on benchmarks. The Applied Scientist will perform expert-level manual audits, conduct meta-audits to evaluate auditor performance, and provide targeted coaching to uplift overall quality capabilities. A critical aspect of this role involves developing and maintaining LLM-as-a-Judge systems, including designing judge architectures, creating evaluation rubrics, and building machine learning models for automated quality assessment. The Applied Scientist will also set up the configuration of data collection workflows and communicate quality feedback to stakeholders. An Applied Scientist will also have a direct impact on enhancing customer experiences through high-quality training and evaluation data that powers state-of-the-art LLM products and services. A day in the life An Applied Scientist with the AGI team will support quality solution design, conduct root cause analysis on data quality issues, research new auditing methodologies, and find innovative ways of optimizing data quality while setting examples for the team on quality assurance best practices and standards. Besides theoretical analysis and quality framework development, an Applied Scientist will also work closely with talented engineers, domain experts, and vendor teams to put quality strategies and automated judging systems into practice.
Applied Scientist, Artificial General Intelligence, AGI Data Services
US, MA, Boston
The Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team is seeking a dedicated, skilled, and innovative Applied Scientist with a robust background in machine learning, statistics, quality assurance, auditing methodologies, and automated evaluation systems to ensure the highest standards of data quality, to build industry-leading technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal systems. Key job responsibilities As part of the AGI team, an Applied Scientist will collaborate closely with core scientist team developing Amazon Nova models. They will lead the development of comprehensive quality strategies and auditing frameworks that safeguard the integrity of data collection workflows. This includes designing auditing strategies with detailed SOPs, quality metrics, and sampling methodologies that help Nova improve performances on benchmarks. The Applied Scientist will perform expert-level manual audits, conduct meta-audits to evaluate auditor performance, and provide targeted coaching to uplift overall quality capabilities. A critical aspect of this role involves developing and maintaining LLM-as-a-Judge systems, including designing judge architectures, creating evaluation rubrics, and building machine learning models for automated quality assessment. The Applied Scientist will also set up the configuration of data collection workflows and communicate quality feedback to stakeholders. An Applied Scientist will also have a direct impact on enhancing customer experiences through high-quality training and evaluation data that powers state-of-the-art LLM products and services. A day in the life An Applied Scientist with the AGI team will support quality solution design, conduct root cause analysis on data quality issues, research new auditing methodologies, and find innovative ways of optimizing data quality while setting examples for the team on quality assurance best practices and standards. Besides theoretical analysis and quality framework development, an Applied Scientist will also work closely with talented engineers, domain experts, and vendor teams to put quality strategies and automated judging systems into practice.
Applied Scientist, Artificial General Intelligence, AGI Data Services
US, MA, Boston
The Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team is seeking a dedicated, skilled, and innovative Applied Scientist with a robust background in machine learning, statistics, quality assurance, auditing methodologies, and automated evaluation systems to ensure the highest standards of data quality, to build industry-leading technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal systems. Key job responsibilities As part of the AGI team, an Applied Scientist will collaborate closely with core scientist team developing Amazon Nova models. They will lead the development of comprehensive quality strategies and auditing frameworks that safeguard the integrity of data collection workflows. This includes designing auditing strategies with detailed SOPs, quality metrics, and sampling methodologies that help Nova improve performances on benchmarks. The Applied Scientist will perform expert-level manual audits, conduct meta-audits to evaluate auditor performance, and provide targeted coaching to uplift overall quality capabilities. A critical aspect of this role involves developing and maintaining LLM-as-a-Judge systems, including designing judge architectures, creating evaluation rubrics, and building machine learning models for automated quality assessment. The Applied Scientist will also set up the configuration of data collection workflows and communicate quality feedback to stakeholders. An Applied Scientist will also have a direct impact on enhancing customer experiences through high-quality training and evaluation data that powers state-of-the-art LLM products and services. A day in the life An Applied Scientist with the AGI team will support quality solution design, conduct root cause analysis on data quality issues, research new auditing methodologies, and find innovative ways of optimizing data quality while setting examples for the team on quality assurance best practices and standards. Besides theoretical analysis and quality framework development, an Applied Scientist will also work closely with talented engineers, domain experts, and vendor teams to put quality strategies and automated judging systems into practice.
See more jobs
View from space of a connected network around planet Earth representing the Internet of Things.
Get more from Amazon Science
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter

Amazon.com | Conditions of Use | Privacy | © 1996-2026 Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates

Social