1<!DOCTYPE html> 2<html> 3 4 <head> 5 <meta charset="utf-8"> 6<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, shrink-to-fit=no"> 7<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge"> 8 9<title>Vinith M. Suriyakumar</title> 10<meta name="description" content="A simple, whitespace theme for academics. Based on [*folio](https://github.com/bogoli/-folio) design. 11"> 12 13<!-- Bootstrap & MDB --> 14<link href="https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.4.1/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet" integrity="sha384-Vkoo8x4CGsO3+Hhxv8T/Q5PaXtkKtu6ug5TOeNV6gBiFeWPGFN9MuhOf23Q9Ifjh" crossorigin="anonymous"> 15<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/mdbootstrap/4.17.0/css/mdb.min.css" integrity="sha256-/SwJ2GDcEt5382i8zqDwl36VJGECxEoIcBIuoLmLR4g=" crossorigin="anonymous" /> 16 17<!-- Fonts & Icons --> 18<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/font-awesome/5.13.0/css/all.min.css" integrity="sha256-h20CPZ0QyXlBuAw7A+KluUYx/3pK+c7lYEpqLTlxjYQ=" crossorigin="anonymous"> 19<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/academicons/1.8.6/css/academicons.min.css" integrity="sha256-uFVgMKfistnJAfoCUQigIl+JfUaP47GrRKjf6CTPVmw=" crossorigin="anonymous"> 20<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Roboto:300,400,500,700|Roboto+Slab:100,300,400,500,700|Material+Icons"> 21 22<!-- Styles --> 23<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/assets/img/favicon.ico"> 24<link rel="stylesheet" href="/assets/css/main.css"> 25 26<link rel="canonical" href="/"> 27 28<!-- Open Graph --> 29 30 31 </head> 32 33 <body class="fixed-top-nav "> 34 35 <!-- Header --> 36 37 <header> 38 39 <!-- Nav Bar --> 40 <nav id="navbar" class="navbar navbar-light bg-white navbar-expand-sm fixed-top"> 41 <div class="container"> 42 43 <!-- Navbar Toogle --> 44 <button class="navbar-toggler collapsed ml-auto" type="button" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#navbarNav" aria-controls="navbarNav" aria-expanded="false" aria-label="Toggle navigation"> 45 <span class="sr-only">Toggle navigation</span> 46 <span class="icon-bar top-bar"></span> 47 <span class="icon-bar middle-bar"></span> 48 <span class="icon-bar bottom-bar"></span> 49 </button> 50 <div class="collapse navbar-collapse text-right" id="navbarNav"> 51 <ul class="navbar-nav ml-auto flex-nowrap"> 52 <!-- About --> 53 <li class="nav-item active"> 54 <a class="nav-link" href="/"> 55 about 56 57 <span class="sr-only">(current)</span> 58 59 </a> 60 </li> 61 62 <!-- Other pages --> 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 <li class="nav-item "> 75 <a class="nav-link" href="/assets/pdf/VMS_CV.pdf"> 76 curriculum vitae 77 78 </a> 79 </li> 80 81 82 83 <li class="nav-item "> 84 <a class="nav-link" href="/preprints/"> 85 preprints 86 87 </a> 88 </li> 89 90 91 92 93 94 <li class="nav-item "> 95 <a class="nav-link" href="/publications/"> 96 publications 97 98 </a> 99 </li> 100 101 102 103 104 </ul> 105 </div> 106 </div> 107 </nav> 108 109</header> 110 111 112 <!-- Content --> 113 114 <div class="container mt-5"> 115 <div class="post"> 116 117 <header class="post-header"> 118 119 <h1 class="post-title"><span class="font-weight-bold">Vinith</span> Suriyakumar</h1> 120 <p class="post-description">MIT EECS, LIDS, IMES, Bridgewater AIA Labs</p> 121 </header> 122 123 <article> 124 <div class="row"> 125 <div class="col"> 126 <p>I am a fifth year PhD student at MIT EECS where I am advised by <a href="https://www.ashiawilson.com/">Dr. Ashia Wilson</a> and <a href="http://www.marzyehghassemi.com/">Dr. Marzyeh Ghassemi</a>. Iâm supported through a fellowship from <a href="https://www.bridgewater.com/">Bridgewater AIA Labs</a>
126 advised by <a href="https://ddkang.github.io/">Dr. Daniel Kang</a> where I work on LLM pretraining and post-training.</p> 127 128<p>Broadly, Iâm interested in the privacy, security, and safety of machine learning. Iâve worked on many topics in these areas including differential privacy, auditing, algorithmic fairness, and unlearning.</p> 129 130<p><strong>My research focuses on securing internet platforms against malicious behavior enabled by generative AI systems.</strong> I am particularly interested in the safety, security, and governance of open-weight foundation models, with recent work focusing on image-based abuse such as CSAM and NCII generation. Additionally, I focus on addressing safety issues related to cyber misuse, investigating new pretraining algorithms to address dual-use risks. I also investigate security challenges in closed-source systems, including jailbreaking and secure fine-tuning interfaces.</p> 131 132<p>My research advancing the privacy, security and safety of machine learning has received awards at NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, and FAccT:</p> 133 134<ul> 135 <li>ICML 2022 Spotlight</li> 136 <li>ICML 2023 Oral</li> 137 <li>ICLR 2024 Oral</li> 138 <li>FAccT 2024 Best Paper Award</li> 139 <li>NeurIPS 2025 Spotlight</li> 140 <li>ICML 2026 AI4GOOD Workshop Outstanding Paper Award 141<!-- You can read more about my research agenda and the broad questions I'm interested in [here](FILL IN). --></li> 142</ul> 143 144<!-- Link to your social media connections, too. This theme is set up to use [Font Awesome icons](http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/){:target="\_blank"} and [Academicons](https://jpswalsh.github.io/academicons/){:target="\_blank"}, like the ones below. Add your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Scholar, or just disable all of them. --> 145 146 </div> 147 148 <div class="profile col-4 "> 149 150 <img class="img-fluid z-depth-1 rounded" src="/assets/img/prof_pic.jpg"> 151 152 153 </div> 154 155 </div> 156 157 158 <div class="news"> 159 <h2>news</h2> 160 161 <div class="table-responsive"> 162 <table class="table table-sm table-borderless"> 163 164 165 <tr> 166 <th scope="row">Jul 2, 2026</th> 167 <td> 168 169 Iâm excited to announce that Iâll be at ICML 2026 presenting our tutorial on Unlearning Data at Scale and our spotlight at the AI4GOOD workshop for our work on Evaluation Without Generation. 170 171 172 </td> 173 </tr> 174 175 <tr> 176 <th scope="row">Dec 2, 2025</th> 177 <td> 178 179 Iâll be a Visiting Student Researcher at Stanford with <a href="https://cs.stanford.edu/~sanmi/">Dr. Sanmi Koyejo</a> from February to June 2026. 180 181 182 </td> 183 </tr> 184 185 <tr> 186 <th scope="row">Oct 18, 2025</th> 187 <td> 188 189 I gave two invited talks recently on open-weight model safety and <a href="/assets/pdf/Bridgewater_Talk.pdf">unlearning</a> at the MITAI Conference and the Bridgewater AIA Distinguished Speaker Series. 190 191 192 </td> 193 </tr> 194 195 </table> 196 </div> 197 198</div> 199 200 201 202 203 <div class="social"> 204 <span class="contact-icon text-center"> 205 <a href="mailto:%76%69%6E%69%74%68%6D%73@%6D%69%74.%65%64%75"><i class="fas fa-envelope"></i></a> 206 207 208 209 210 <a href="https://github.com/VMS-6511" target="_blank" title="GitHub"><i class="fab fa-github"></i></a> 211 <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/vsuriyakumar" target="_blank" title="LinkedIn"><i class="fab fa-linkedin"></i></a> 212 <a href="https://twitter.com/VMSuriyakumar" target="_blank" title="Twitter"><i class="fab fa-twitter"></i></a> 213 214 215 216 217</span> 218 219 <div class="contact-note">Email is the best way to reach me. Feel free to send me a message if anything interests you! 220</div> 221 </div> 222 223 </article> 224 225</div> 226 227 </div> 228 229 <!-- Footer --> 230 231 232<footer class="fixed-bottom"> 233 <div class="container mt-0"> 234 © Copyright 2026 Vinith M. Suriyakumar. 235 Powered by <a href="http://jekyllrb.com/" target="_blank">Jekyll</a> with <a href="https://github.com/alshedivat/al-folio">al-folio</a> theme. Hosted by <a href="https://pages.github.com/" target="_blank">GitHub Pages</a>. Photos from <a href="https://unsplash.com" target="_blank">Unsplash</a>. 236 237 238 Last updated: August 03, 2026. 239 240 </div> 241</footer> 242 243 244 245 </body> 246 247 <!-- Load Core and Bootstrap JS -->
248<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.4.1.slim.min.js" integrity="sha384-J6qa4849blE2+poT4WnyKhv5vZF5SrPo0iEjwBvKU7imGFAV0wwj1yYfoRSJoZ+n" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
vendor: 1 bytes, line 248
248
249<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/popper.js/2.4.0/umd/popper.min.js" integrity="sha256-OH05DFHUWzr725HmuHo3pnuvUUn+TJuj8/Qz9xytFEw=" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
vendor: 1 bytes, line 249
249
250<script src="https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.4.1/js/bootstrap.min.js" integrity="sha384-wfSDF2E50Y2D1uUdj0O3uMBJnjuUD4Ih7YwaYd1iqfktj0Uod8GCExl3Og8ifwB6" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
vendor: 1 bytes, line 250
250
251<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/mdbootstrap/4.17.0/js/mdb.min.js" integrity="sha384-wfSDF2E50Y2D1uUdj0O3uMBJnjuUD4Ih7YwaYd1iqfktj0Uod8GCExl3Og8ifwB6" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
251 252 253<!-- Load Common JS -->
254<script src="/assets/js/common.js"></script>
254 255 256<!-- Code Syntax Highlighting --> 257<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://gitcdn.link/repo/jwarby/jekyll-pygments-themes/master/github.css" /> 258 259 260<!-- Load KaTeX --> 261<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/KaTeX/0.11.1/katex.min.css" integrity="sha256-V8SV2MO1FUb63Bwht5Wx9x6PVHNa02gv8BgH/uH3ung=" crossorigin="anonymous" />
262<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/KaTeX/0.11.1/katex.min.js" integrity="sha256-F/Xda58SPdcUCr+xhSGz9MA2zQBPb0ASEYKohl8UCHc=" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
vendor: 1 bytes, line 262
262
263<script src="/assets/js/katex.js"></script>
263 264 265 266 267<!-- Load Mansory & imagesLoaded -->
268<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/masonry/4.2.2/masonry.pkgd.min.js" integrity="" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
vendor: 1 bytes, line 268
268
269<script src="https://unpkg.com/imagesloaded@4/imagesloaded.pkgd.min.js"></script>
269 270 271<!-- Project Cards Layout -->
272<script type="text/javascript"> 273 // Init Masonry 274 var $grid = $('.grid').masonry({ 275 gutter: 10, 276 horizontalOrder: true, 277 itemSelector: '.grid-item', 278 }); 279 // layout Masonry after each image loads 280 $grid.imagesLoaded().progress( function() { 281 $grid.masonry('layout'); 282 }); 283</script>
283 284 285 286 287 288 289<!-- Google Analytics -->
290<script>
vendor: 329 bytes, lines 290-296
290 291(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){ 292(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o), 293m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m) 294})(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga'); 295 296ga('create', '
296UA-174129382-1
vendor: 36 bytes, lines 296-297
296', 'auto'); 297ga('send', 'pageview');
298</script>
298 299 300 301 302</html>
Line numbers count LF bytes from the start of the resource, as the search results do. Vendor segments are library code the classifier recognised; they are stored but not indexed. Bytes are shown as Latin1 characters, one per byte.