Avni Mittal

I am a Data Scientist (AI Research) at Microsoft Security Platform. My research is driven by the goal of building interpretable and reliable AI systems that enable efficient and trustworthy reasoning in high-stakes settings.

I am particularly interested in understanding how reasoning emerges inside models and how this understanding can be used to design systems whose behavior is robust, faithful, and aligned. My work focuses on two complementary directions:

Mechanistic transparency: studying internal representations and architectural components to reveal latent structure, diagnose reasoning failures, and develop principled methods for steering model behavior.
Agentic reliability: designing evaluation frameworks for reasoning faithfulness and exploring verifiable alignment strategies that enforce safety in agent-based and multi-agent systems.

Previously, I worked on Neural Cellular Automata–based architectures for medical image segmentation and multimodal engagement analysis. I graduated with a B.Tech in CSE (Honours) from IIT Mandi (Department Rank 2) and spent a semester at TU Darmstadt.

Email / CV / LinkedIn / GitHub / Google Scholar

News

[Feb '26] Talk Took tool lectures on "LLM Agents" for the Deep Learning course at IIT Hyderabad.
[Sept '25] Talk Invited talk on "How Agentic Systems Can Be Developed for Organizational Information Processing Using RAG" at IIT Hyderabad, Digital Transformation series.
[Sept '25] Research Started supervised research at SPAR AI (Safety & Alignment Research) — studying faithfulness and deceptive reasoning in Mixture-of-Experts models.
[Jul '25] Paper LITMUS++ accepted at IJCNLP-AACL 2025 (System Demonstration Track). Patent filed.
[2025] Award Received the AI Innovation Award at Microsoft Security Platform for the Security Analysis Agent.
[2025] Paper PROTECT accepted at SICon 2025 (ACL Workshop).
[2025] Paper MedSegDiffNCA accepted at IEEE CBMS 2025.
[2025] Patent Filed patent on "Multi-Agent Predictive Systems for Cross-Domain Model Performance Assessment" with Dr. Sandipan Dandapat and Dr. Monojit Choudhury.
[2025] Patent Filed patent on "A System of Simultaneous Optimization of Multiple Agents" (Multi-Agent Prompt Tuner).
[Feb '25] Teaching Research group lead for CS672 Advanced Deep Learning at IIT Mandi, guiding UG students on GNNs and NCA.
[Jan '24] Industry Joined Microsoft as Data Scientist (AI Research) working on multi-agent systems and AI alignment.
[Sep '24] Paper ECLIPSE accepted at ECAI 2024.
[Sep '24] Paper Exceda accepted at IEEE MIPR 2024.
[May '24] Graduated from IIT Mandi with B.Tech CSE (Honours), CGPA 8.93/10, Department Rank 2.
[2024] Award Academic Excellence Award (CSE), IIT Mandi — Highest SGPA in 5th and 6th semesters.
[2023] Award Top 5 Rank at Inter-IIT Tech Meet representing IIT Mandi.
[Oct '22] Semester exchange at TU Darmstadt, Germany — CGPA 9.36/10.

Publications

LITMUS++: An Agentic System for Predictive Analysis of Low-Resource Languages Across Tasks and Models

Avni Mittal, Shanu Kumar, Sandipan Dandapat, Monojit Choudhary

IJCNLP–AACL 2025, System Demonstration Track

paper

PROTECT: Policy-Related Organizational Value Taxonomy for Ethical Compliance and Trust

Avni Mittal, Sree Hari Nagaralu, Sandipan Dandapat

SICon 2025 (ACL Workshop)

paper

MedSegDiffNCA: Diffusion Models with Neural Cellular Automata for Skin Lesion Segmentation

Avni Mittal, John Kalkhof, Anirban Mukhopadhyay, Arnav Bhavsar

IEEE CBMS 2025

paper

Unveiling Learner Dynamics: The ECLIPSE Dataset and NeuralGaze Framework for Prolonged Engagement Assessment in Online Learning

Avinash Anand, Avni Mittal, Laavanaya Dhawan, Mahisha Ramesh, Juhi Krishnamurthy, Naman Lal, Raj Jaiswal, Pijush Bhuyan, Himani, Astha Verma, Rajiv Ratn Shah, Roger Zimmermann, Shin'ichi Satoh

ECAI 2024

paper

Exceda: Unlocking Attention Paradigms in Extended Duration E-Classrooms with Attention Mechanism

Avinash Anand, Avni Mittal, Laavanaya Dhawan, Juhi Krishnamurthy, Mahisha Ramesh, Naman Lal, Astha Verma, Pijush Bhuyan, Himani, Rajiv Ratn Shah, Roger Zimmermann, Shin'ichi Satoh

IEEE MIPR 2024

paper

Patents

Multi-Agent Predictive Systems for Cross-Domain Model Performance Assessment

Avni Mittal, Shanu Kumar, Sandipan Dandapat, Monojit Choudhary

Patent filed

A System of Simultaneous Optimization of Multiple Agents

Gautam Prasad, Avni Mittal, Yugal Sachdev

Patent filed

A System to Navigate Product Complexities through Automatic Visual Guide Generation

Gautam Prasad, Avni Mittal, Yugal Sachdev

Patent being filed

Selected Experience

Data Scientist (AI Research), Microsoft

Multi-agent systems, AI alignment, compliance automation. Built the Security Analysis Agent (89% precision, AI Innovation Award). Developed Multi-Agent Prompt Tuner and Swarm Pinboard. Improved RAG performance from 60% to 91% for Security Copilot Skill deployed to 2,000+ enterprise tenants.

Jan 2024 – Present

Supervised Research, SPAR AI (Safety & Alignment Research)

Studying faithfulness and deceptive reasoning in MoE models. Developed perturbation-based benchmarks from PRM800K to evaluate Chain-of-Thought faithfulness.

Sept 2025 – Present

Research with Dr. Sandipan Dandapat & Dr. Monojit Choudhury

Multi-agent system for predictive analysis of low-resource languages. Work published at IJCNLP-AACL 2025; patent filed.

Jul 2025 – Present

Research Intern, MIDAS Lab, IIIT Delhi

Supervisor: Dr. Rajiv Ratn Shah. Multimodal engagement prediction using NCA. Published at ECAI 2024 and IEEE MIPR 2024.

Sept 2023 – Aug 2024

Bachelor's Thesis, IIT Mandi & TU Darmstadt

Supervisors: Dr. Arnav Bhavsar & Dr. Anirban Mukhopadhyay. Medical image segmentation using NCA and Diffusion models. Published as MedSegDiffNCA at IEEE CBMS 2025.

Aug 2023 – May 2024

Student Research Assistant, TU Darmstadt

Explainable AI methods and robustness analysis under adversarial attacks. C-Arm orientation tracking for surgical workflow optimization.

Dec 2022 – Mar 2023