cv

Basics

Name Balint Gyevnar
Label PhD Candidate
Email balint.gyevnar@ed.ac.uk
Url https://gbalint.me/
Summary A UK-based researcher of trustworthy explainable autonomous agency in multi-agent systems for achieving safer AI, with applications to autonomous vehicles.

Projects

  • 2021.09 - Present
    Causal Explanations for Sequential Decision-Making in Multi-Agent Systems
    • CEMA: Combining counterfactual causation with RL-based planning to create causally-grounded explanations in naturual language
    • Two large human subjects studies to elicit and evaluate naturally occuring and automatically generated explanations
    • HEADD: The Human Explanations for Autonomous Driving Decisions dataset
    • Integration of LLMs with CEMA in an RAG approach to improve the quality of explanations
  • 2024.07 - Present
    Bridging AI Safety and AI Ethics: An Emprical Approach
    • Curation of corpus of 3K+ papers on AI safety and AI ethics
    • Data analysis and visualization techniques to identify overlapping and different topics in the literature
    • Advocating for an epistemically inclusive approach to AI safety that considers long standing safe ML research and AI ethics
    • Research done with Shannon Vallor and Atoosa Kasirzadeh
  • 2020.05 - 2022.10
    Interpretable and Verifiable Goal-Based Prediction and Planning for Autonomous Driving
    • IGP2: Implementing rational inverse planning and Monte Carlo Tree Search for interpretable goal-based prediction and planning in autonomous vehicles
    • GRIT: Training and evaluating decision tree-based verifiable goal recognition models for autonomous driving

Education

  • 2021.09 - 2025.12

    Edinburgh, Scotland

    PhD
    University of Edinburgh
    Natural Language Processing with Integrated Studies
  • 2018.08 - 2019.06

    Singapore

    Exchange Year
    Nanyang Technological University
    Computer Science
  • 2016.09 - 2021.05

    Edinburgh, Scotland

    Master's
    University of Edinburgh
    Master of Informatics

Work

  • 2023.07 - Present
    Research Assistant
    University of Edinburgh
    Researching the intersection of AI safety and AI ethics through content analysis methods. Assistant to Dr. Atoosa Kasirzadeh of Carnegie Mellon University.
    • Large scale quantitative literature analysis with unsupervised natural language processing tools.
    • Curation, topic coding, and qualitative analysis of large corpora of papers.
  • 2020.09 - Present
    Teaching Assistant
    University of Edinburgh
    Teaching assistant helping with the delivery and teaching of university courses.
    • Assistant supervisor for two master's students.
    • Online tutorial sessions to ~12 students for introductory machine learning course.
    • Coursework and exam marker for courses in the School of Informatics, including Doing Research in NLP, Reinforcement Learning, Computer Systems, and Machine Learning.
  • 2020.05 - 2020.10
    Research Intern
    FiveAI
    Development and evaluation of novel planning and prediction algorithm for autonomous vehicles.
    • Developed and evaluated IGP2, a goal-based interpretable prediction and planning system for autonomous vehicles with intuitive explanations.
    • Publication at International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2021.

Volunteer

  • 2022.09 - 2025.06

    Edinburgh, Scotland

    Executive Committee Member
    Edinburgh University Volleyball Club
    Executive committee member of EUVC responsible for the deliverance of the club's volleyball programme to more than 200 members.
    • Responsible for public outreach to and networking with alumni members and organizing a two-day event series.
    • Large-scale event organization, public speaking, timetabling, and human resource management of 8 teams, 10 coaches, and 220+ members.
    • Managing a cash flow of approximately £70k, setting up an annual budget, and managing thousands of transactions.

Awards

  • 2024.06.09
    Colours Award
    Edinburgh University Sports Union
    Colours reward those individuals have given time and effort above and beyond the call of duty to their chosen sport or Club. University Sport could not operate without these volunteers organising and co-ordinating Clubs and the Colours award recognises this endeavour.
  • 2023.08.01
    AI100 Early Career Essay Competition
    AI100 Committee at Stanford University
    Researchers from 18 countries answered the call, offering intriguing perspectives on AI and its impacts on society. In addition to the winner, AI100 selected a collection of five essays that thoughtfully consider AI at the intersection of morality, regulation, love, labor, and religion. Balint's essay was selected as one of the five finalists, titled 'Love, Sex, and AI'.
  • 2022.07.01
    Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Early Career Research Award, Knowledge Transfer Track
    United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI)
    The inaugural TAS Early Career Researcher (ECR) Awards were initiated to celebrate outstanding contributions made by PhD students and postdoctoral researchers to any area of Trustworthy Autonomous Systems research in the last three years. Balint was awarded £4000 by the UKRI TAS Hub to achieve his vision for more trustworthy autonomous systems (TAS) through explainability and conversations.
  • 2021.06.01
    "Shape the Future of ITS" Competition
    IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society (ITSS)
    In 2021, the Intelligent Transportation Systems Society (ITSS) organized a competition on the topic “Shape the Future of ITS” by asking participants to present a futuristic vision on transportation systems, the way they will operate, and the product and services they will provide. Balint Gyevnar's vision was selected as a 3rd place winner, titled 'Cars that Explain: Building Trust in Autonomous Vehicles through Explanations and Conversations'.

Publications

Skills

Data Analysis
Human Subjects Studies
Text Analysis
Unsupervised Topic Modelling
Mixed Effects Modelling
Statistical Hypothesis Testing
Data Visualization
Programming
Python (PyTorch, Transformers, Pandas, Matplotlib, etc.)
R (dplyr, ggplot2, rlmer, brms, etc.)
C#
C++
Artificial Intelligence
Natural Language Processing
Reinforcement Learning (MCTS, PPO, DQN, etc.)
Explainable AI (SHAP, LIME, etc.)
Autonomous Vehicles
Soft Skills
Leadership
Event Organization
Public Speaking
Presentation Skills

Languages

Hungarian
Native speaker
English
Fluent
German
Fluent
Japanese
Advanced
Chinese
Beginner
Polish
Beginner

Interests

Explainable AI (XAI)
Classical XAI
Human-Centered XAI
Explainable Reinforcement Learning
Human-Computer Interaction
Deep Learning
Large Language Models
Grounding LLMs
Human-LLM Interaction
In-Context Causal Learning
Robotics
Reinforecement Learning
Autonomous Vehicles
Multi-Agent Systems
AI Safety
Epistemic Foundations of AI Safety
AI Safety and Ethics
Agentic Systems

References

On Request
Please get in touch with me for references.