News and Updates

📄 New preprint out: Can Language Model Agents be Helpful Circuit Explainers in Mechanistic Interpretability? (06/2026)
🎉 Started PhD at George Mason University CS with a Graduate Teaching Assistantship! (08/2025)
🎉 Promoted to SDE 2 at IQVIA! Grateful for the team's incredible support. (04/2025)

About me

Hi, I am a first-year CS PhD student at George Mason University. My current research focuses on mechanistic interpretability and AI agents — understanding the internal mechanisms of language models and building agentic systems that leverage those insights. I am broadly interested in the explainability and reasoning capabilities of LLMs, as well as safety and bias in AI.

At GMU, I am advised by Prof. Ziyu Yao. In our recent work, we study whether language model agents can serve as helpful circuit explainers in mechanistic interpretability — read our preprint Can Language Model Agents be Helpful Circuit Explainers in Mechanistic Interpretability?.

My undergraduate thesis was under Dr Rifat Shahriyar. In the thesis, our goal was to detect gender bias in Bangla Language Models. Based on our thesis work, we have published a paper titled An Empirical Study on the Characteristics of Bias upon Context Length Variation for Bangla which was accepted for poster presentation in the Findings of ACL 2024.

Resume

Work Experience

  1. Graduate Research Assistant

    George Mason University May 2026 - Present Advised by Prof. Ziyu Yao

  2. Graduate Teaching Assistant

    George Mason University August 2025 - May 2026 Teaching Assistant for CS 112: Introduction to Computer Programming (Python)

  3. Software Development Engineer

    IQVIA June 2023 - July 2025 Awarded the IQVIA Gold Impact Award for contributions to the team

Research & Publications


  1. Can Language Model Agents be Helpful Circuit Explainers in Mechanistic Interpretability?

    Ayan Antik Khan, Harsh Kohli, Yuekun Yao, Huan Sun, Ziyu Yao Preprint, 2026 First author Mechanistic Interpretability, LLM Agents [Preprint] [Code] Research with Prof. Ziyu Yao at George Mason University. We study whether language model agents can assist in explaining circuits once they have been localized. We introduce AgenticInterpBench, a benchmark of 84 semi-synthetic transformer circuits with 163 component-level annotations, and propose HyVE (Hypothesize, Validate, Explain), an agentic explainer that analyzes each component through an iterative loop of observation, hypothesis generation, and causal validation, producing component- and circuit-level explanations.

  2. An Empirical Study on the Characteristics of Bias upon Context Length Variation for Bangla

    Jayanta Sadhu, Ayan Antik Khan, Abhik Bhattacharjee, Rifat Shahriyar Accepted at ACL 2024 (Findings) Same contribution as 1st author Bias and Fairness, Low-Resource NLP [Preprint] [Proceedings] Undergraduate Thesis under the supervision of Dr Rifat Shahriyar. In this study, we investigate gender bias in Bangla, a low-resource language, by creating a specialized dataset and adapting existing bias measurement methods to fit the linguistic context. Our research highlights the significant impact of context length variation on bias metrics, a factor previously overlooked in bias studies. Through our experiments, we demonstrate the necessity for nuanced considerations in Bangla bias analysis. Our work serves as a foundational step towards comprehensive bias measurement in Bangla, with all resources made publicly available to support future research.

  3. Multi-ToM: Evaluating Multilingual Theory of Mind Capabilities in Large Language Models

    Jayanta Sadhu, Ayan Antik Khan, Noshin Nawal, Sanju Basak, Abhik Bhattacharjee, Rifat Shahriyar Same contribution as 1st author LLM Reasoning, Theory of Mind, Multilingual NLP [Preprint] Research project with BUET CSE NLP Group. In this study, we explore the cognitive reasoning abilities of Multilingual Large Language Models within the domain of Theory of Mind (ToM). Our research incorporates cultural elements into ToM tasks, capturing the social and cognitive scenarios unique to various cultural contexts.

Education

  1. B. Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering

    Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology April 2018 - May 2023 CGPA 3.85/4.00 Dean's list scholarship for academic performance in 6 out of 8 academic terms

  2. Higher Secondary School Certificate (HSC)

    Notre Dame College 2015 — 2017 GPA 5.00/5.00 Board Scholarship

  3. Secondary School Certificate (SSC)

    St Joseph Higher Secondary School 2007 — 2015 GPA 5.00/5.00

Technical Skills

  1. Programming Languages

    Python, C++, C, Java, TypeScript, SQL, Bash, HTML, CSS, LaTeX

  2. Frameworks & Libraries

    Machine Learning: scikit-learn, Keras, TensorFlow, PyTorch, Pandas, wandb Web Development: Angular, ReactJS, Django, Bootstrap Networking: ns3

  3. Tools

    AWS Sagemaker, Git, PostgreSQL, Oracle

Projects

  • Grammatical Error Detection and Correction in Bangla

    Bangla-GED

    View on GitHub

    PyTorch, Hugging Face, scikit-learn

    Term Project for CSE 472: Machine Learning Sessional (CSE Department, BUET). This project focuses on detecting and correcting grammatical errors in Bangla sentences. To achieve this, we create a dataset by synthetically introducing error in a newspaper dataset. Achieved 93% accuracy in detecting incorrect Bangla sentences by incorporating Sequence Tagging with BanglaBERT and a sacreBLEU score of 90 for sentence correction and auto-completion using BanglaT5.

  • Vectorized Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) from Scratch

    CNN

    View on GitHub

    NumPy

    A vectorized implementation of a Convolutional Neural Network using numpy without any deeplearning frameworks. Training and testing of the developed model is done on the NumtaDB: Bengali Handwritten Digits dataset. This was the final assignment of the CSE 472: Machine Learning Sessional course offered by CSE Department, BUET.

  • Notabene: A browser based knowledge management tool

    forage

    Website View on YouTube View on GitHub

    Django REST, ReactJS, Chrome Extension Manifest V3, PostgreSQL

    Notabene is a browser based knowledge management tool. It consists of a browser extension to highlight texts and take notes from webpages and a website to manage them. It lets the user explore a powerful document management system that allows them to highlight, annotate, and categorize webpages, collaborate with others, and share documents securely. Users can enjoy personalized note-taking, tagging, and document recommendations. This was the term Project for CSE 408: Software Development Sessional offered by the CSE Department of BUET.

  • TCP-FR(Faster Recovery) and GFR (Gradual Faster Recovery)

    View on GitHub

    NS3

    Simulation and implementation of a congestion control algorithm on two different topologies using NS3 - a network simulator. This was the term project for CSE 322: Computer Networks course offered by the CSE Department of BUET.

  • QuizUp

    QuizUp

    View on YouTube

    Django, Bootstrap, Oracle

    QuizUp is a website where you can test yourself by playing quizzes and write articles on various topics. It is a browser version of the famous mobile app QuizUp. We developed this as our term project for CSE 216: Database Management System Sessional course.

  • Ray Tracing

    rtx-on

    View on GitHub

    Computer Graphics, OpenGL

    In this project, we implemented a ray tracing pipeline from scratch. Phong Lighting Model and Recursive Reflection is used for proper lighting and ray tracing. This was the final task of CSE 410: Computer Graphics Sessional course.

  • Compiler from scratch

    compiler

    View on GitHub

    Flex, Bison

    In this sessional task, we created a compiler from scratch for a subset of the C language. Besides the basics (conditions, loops and functions), I also implemented recursive functions as a bonus task. The assignments are for the CSE 310: Compiler Sessional course.

  • Online Poker

    Online Poker

    View on GitHub

    Java, JavaFX

    A LAN multiplayer poker game built with JavaFX. It is a server-client based implementation of the famous 'Texas hold'em Poker'. This project was done in the CSE 108: Object Oriented Programming Sessional course offered by CSE Department of BUET.

Achievements

Competitions

  1. Bangla Complex Named Entity Recognition Challenge

    Finalist January 2023

    [View in GitHub]

    Participated in the Bangla Complex Named Entity Recognition Challenge, part of the first ever NLP Hackathon in Bangladesh (organized by the EBLICT project and BDOSN). The event was supported by the ICT Division of Bangladesh, Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC), and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Awards & Scholarships

  1. IQVIA Gold Impact Award

    IQVIA July 2024 Award

    Received the IQVIA Gold Impact Award for contributions to the team

  2. RISE Research Grant

    Research and Innovation Center for Science and Engineering November 2022

    Received research grant from RISE (Research and Innovation Center for Science and Engineering) for our undergraduate thesis titled Towards Bias Free Natural Language Processing for Bangla. We also presented our thesis in a poster presentation arranged by RISE.

  3. Dean's List Scholarship

    December 2018 - June 2023

    Received Dean's list Scholarship for academic performance in 6 out of 8 undergraduate terms.

  4. University Merit Scholarship

    December 2018 - June 2023

    Received University Merit Scholarship for academic performance in undergraduate studies.

  5. Talentpool Scholarship

    Received Scholarship in National Education Board examinations - Primary School Certificate (PSC), Junior School Certificate(JSC) and Higher Secondary School Certificate(HSC) examinations during School years.

Leadership and Contributions

  1. Organizer

    BUET CSE FEST 2022

    June 2022 - August 2022

    [Visit our Facebook Page]

    Coordinated inter-university competitions such as hackathon, programming contest; Organized the Cricket Tournament and Treasure Hunt competitions for the Department as well as cultural programs on behalf of the graduating class.

  2. Executive Member

    Scintilla Science Club

    Jan 2013 - March 2014

    [Visit our Facebook Page]

    Played a key role in the organization of Science Fair 2013 and 2014 in St Joseph Higher Secondary School.