I am a Research Engineer at MBZUAI, working with Dr. Nils Lukas on secure, private, and strategic machine learning. My research focuses on language-model agents that rely on retrieval, memory, and tools—systems in which many critical failures arise from the surrounding pipeline rather than the base model itself.
My work spans the development of Etihad Airways' conversational agent, including retrieval, planning, structured response generation, real-time voice agent integration, and a UserLM for stress-testing. I also contribute to AdvSim2Real, which aims to strengthen agentic systems through adversarial simulation. In parallel, I have worked on PERSUADE, a framework for auditing persuasion in LLMs, as well as research on authentic multimedia detection and vision-language robustness. Although these areas differ on the surface, they are connected by the same central concern: understanding how AI systems behave under pressure.
Previously, I completed an MSc by Research in Computer Vision at MBZUAI under the supervision of Dr. Mohammad Yaqub. Before that, I earned a BTech in Mechanical Engineering from Jamia Millia Islamia and worked on autonomous-vehicle research at IIIT Delhi under Dr. Saket Anand.
Outside of research, I stay active on the court playing badminton and padel, and round things out with regular sessions at the gym. I am an avid reader, moving between novels and machine-learning books, and a big fan of mixed martial arts who spends plenty of time watching UFC, BJJ, and Muay Thai.
News
- Jun 2026 NEW Won the Cursor x Evoost AI Hackathon 2026 with Hakim AI — a real-time talking AI avatar for grounded decision intelligence over Abu Dhabi proptech data.
- Apr 2026 NEW CASS (Nvidia → AMD transpilation) accepted at the ACL 2026 Main Conference.
- Mar 2026 NEW Submitted PERSUADE — a debate arena for auditing persuasion in LLMs.
- Mar 2026 NEW Submitted work on robust and calibrated detection of authentic multimedia content.
- Oct 2025 Received the UAE Golden Visa, awarded for outstanding academic achievement.
- Aug 2025 Secured 3rd place at MICCAI BraTS 2025 — SSA Track.
- Jul 2025 Started as Research Engineer at MBZUAI with Dr. Nils Lukas, building Etihad Airways' conversational agent.
- May 2025 Guaranteed Guess (CISC → RISC transpilation) accepted at EMNLP 2025; completed MSc (Research) in Computer Vision at MBZUAI.
- May 2025 Won 1st place at TAMMathon 2025 (AED 25,000).
- Feb 2025 SALT (parameter-efficient fine-tuning via singular-value adaptation) accepted at BMVC 2025.
- Nov 2024 Optimizing Brain Tumor Segmentation with MedNeXt accepted at MICCAI 2024 Workshop; 3rd place at BraTS 2024 SSA & Pediatrics Challenge.
- May 2024 Joined Etisalat as a Machine Learning Engineer, building a RAG chatbot over Excel datasets.
- Aug 2023 Joined MBZUAI for an MSc by Research in Computer Vision with a full-ride scholarship, under Dr. Mohammad Yaqub.
- May 2023 Graduated from Jamia Millia Islamia with an outstanding GPA, completing my thesis under Prof. S. M. Muzakkir and Prof. Harish Hirani (co-guide, IIT Delhi).
- Mar 2022 Started as a Research Intern at IIIT Delhi with Dr. Saket Anand on an autonomous last-mile E-rickshaw (drive-by-wire, LiDAR calibration, YOLOP perception).