Roma Patel

I am a Research Scientist at Google DeepMind working on AI safety and alignment , with a particular interest in how increasingly capable language-model systems can be evaluated, aligned, and stress-tested before their failures become consequential.

My research asks how we can understand failures in language models, improve alignment objectives and training methods, and build systems that proactively surface emerging risks. I did a PhD in CS/NLP at Brown University advised by Ellie Pavlick, and wrote my thesis on language grounding, representation, and interpretability: foundations that continue to shape how I think about what models understand and how their behavior can be made legible. I also worked with Stefanie Tellex, George Konidaris and Felix Hill as part of my resarch committee. As an undergrad I was advised by Ani Nenkova and Byron Wallace on methods that improve syntax understanding in language tasks.

I am broadly interested in the intersection of language, reinforcement learning, multi-agent systems, and long-term AI safety. Outside of work, I enjoy reading vast amounts of literature, going to new mountains, and to coffeeshops. Feel free to reach out for any research related questions!