AI Researcher

David Bau Portfolio

Assistant Professor at Northeastern University (PhD, MIT) whose lab studies how deep networks internally represent and can be edited to change what they know; created ROME, a method for locating and directly editing factual associations stored inside a language model, and leads the NSF-funded National Deep Inference Fabric project.

InterpretabilityModel EditingAI SafetyAcademic Research

What makes it work

A breakdown of the choices that make this portfolio stand out.

1

A named method that other papers now build on

ROME (Locating and Editing Factual Associations in GPT) gave the field both a technique and a reusable name, and a visible line of follow-up work (Function Vectors, Concept Sliders) shows other researchers building directly on it.

2

Public research infrastructure, not just papers

The National Deep Inference Fabric is shared, NSF-funded infrastructure for running interpretability experiments on large models — a contribution to the field's capacity to do research, not only a result within it.

3

A lab page that reads as a living research program

Listing multiple 2026 ICLR papers across distinct subtopics (symbolic reasoning, model internals, theory of mind) shows an active, multi-threaded lab rather than a single-topic research niche.

What AI Researchers can take from this

Specific, actionable tips to apply to your own portfolio — no generic advice.

  • Give a technique you develop a clear name — a named method is easier for the field to cite, extend, and build follow-up work on top of.

  • Consider building shared infrastructure (tools, compute access, datasets) for your subfield, not only publishing results that use infrastructure others built.

  • Keep several related research threads visibly active at once rather than one narrow topic — it signals a running lab, not a single finished project.

Ready to build your portfolio?

Follow the AI Researcher roadmap — skills, projects, and timeline to get hired.

AI Researcher Roadmap