Auburn University: Successfully defended my Ph.D.

Nov 20, 2025·
Yash Mahajan
Yash Mahajan
· 1 min read
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Defended my dissertation, Evaluating Semantic and Contextual Alignment in Language Models, advised by Dr. Sathyanarayanan N. Aakur and co-advised by Dr. Shubhra Kanti Karmaker.

Yash Mahajan
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Postdoctoral Researcher, BridgeAI Lab
I’m a postdoctoral researcher in the BridgeAI Lab at the University of Central Florida, where I study how language models and AI systems should be evaluated, selected, and deployed when aggregate benchmark scores do not capture semantic behavior, user requirements, or deployment constraints. I completed my Ph.D. in Computer Science and Software Engineering at Auburn University in 2025, advised by Dr. Sathyanarayanan N. Aakur and co-advised by Dr. Shubhra Kanti (Santu) Karmaker, with a dissertation on evaluating semantic and contextual alignment in language models. My current work combines model evaluation, resource-aware model selection, and scalable inference into reproducible methods for matching AI models to real-world tasks.