UCLA Computer Science Department is proud to announce that Yihao Xue, a third-year PhD student, has been awarded the prestigious OpenAI Superalignment Fast Grant. This grant recognizes Yihao’s cutting-edge research in the robustness of representation learning, with a specific focus on enhancing the generalizability, transferability, and out-of-distribution robustness across various unsupervised/self-supervised/weakly-supervised learning algorithms. The OpenAI Superalignment Fast Grants are designed to support projects that align with OpenAI’s efforts to enhance the alignment and safety of superhuman AI systems. This grant will support Yihao, a member of the BigML lab advised by Professor Baharan Mirzasoleiman, in his future project on weak-to-strong generalization, which aims to explore how weak supervisors (like humans) can trust and control substantially stronger models (like superhuman AI systems). Ensuring that even the most advanced AI systems in the future safe and beneficial to humanity is one of the premiere challenges in today’s AI research, and Yihao’s research is designed to help address this. Yihao has been dedicated to advancing our understanding of machine learning, especially in scenarios that require a robust performance across a variety of environments and conditions, a critical aspect of AI safety and reliability. Please join us in congratulating Yihao on his accomplishment.