Zack Ankner

I am a fourth year undergraduate student at MIT currently studying Computer Science and Mathematics. Previously, I was a member of Jonathan Ragan-Kelley's lab, where I worked with William Brandon. and a member of the Programming Systems Group (PSG) led by Michael Carbin, where I was supervised by Alex Renda. I was also an research scientist intern at MosaicML.

My current research focus is on aligning LLMs through rigorous empirical investigation of simple modeling changes. I believe that there are many uncomplicated research ideas that are overlooked for more complex and intricate solutions that are often brittle and do not scale. My general research philosophy is to start with the most obvious solution and iteratively add complexity only when necessary.