About

I am a PostDoctoral Scholar at the University of Chicago, Data Science Institute, where I am working with Prof. Chenhao Tan and the Chicago Human+AI (CHAI) research group. I have also collaborated with Prof. Victor Veitch.

I have completed my PhD in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor working with Prof. Qiaozhu Mei as part of Foreseer research group.

My research interests primarily lie in machine learning and deep learning for natural language processing and its applications, spanning a wide variety of topics related to the alignment, interpretability and control of large language models (LLMs). You can check my CV, LinkedIn, DBLP or Google Scholar profiles.

Before starting my PhD at the University of Michigan, I completed my MSc degree in Artificial Intelligence (“cum laude”) at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, where I was part of the Information and Language Processing Systems (ILPS) research group and affiliated with the Amsterdam Data Science Research Centre. I have a double BSc degree in Computer Science & Electrical Engineering and Computers from Transilvania University of Brasov, Romania.

Throughout my graduate studies, I have done several research internships that have greatly inspired me and helped me expand my knowledge and skills. I spent Fall 2020 / Summer 2018  interning with Google Deepmind in London, UK, and Summer 2022 / 2016 / 2014 interning with Microsoft Research in Montreal, Canada / Redmond, Seattle, USA / Cambridge, UK.

I am open to collaborations! If you have a great idea you would like to chat about and / or are interested in working together, please reach out at garbacea@umich.edu or garbacea@uchicago.edu.