Welcome to my personal site!

My name is Victor and I am currently a Senior AI Research Scientist at Mendel AI, where my work focuses on fusing Large Language Models with Symbolic AI for robust medical reasoning.

I completed my PhD at the University of Southern California in May of 2023, where I conducted my research as a member of the Signal Analysis and Interpretation Lab (SAIL) under the advisement of Shrikanth Narayanan. Following my PhD I worked briefly at AWS on what would become HealthScribe.

During my time at SAIL, I focused my research on studies of dyadic interaction where one of the interlocutors acts similar to a guide. My approaches were grounded in a view of behavioral interactions as control-affine dynamical systems, utilizing observational data as a means to fit models which can help us better describe the individuals’ behaviors and in turn navigate the interaction towards a desired outcome. These approaches demonstrated value in applications to domains such as truth identification in child interviews, automated psychotherapist evaluation, and differentiating behavioral disorders in children under diagnostic settings.

My interests sprang from a desire to improve equity and access to mental and behavioral health resources. I believe with correct models, data, and objectives these approaches would allow us to design therapist support tools that would allow clinical practioners to more readily adapt their therapeutic approaches to specific clients and situations, futher still reducing their own burnout.

While at USC, I had the pleasure of meeting Neil Serebryany and becoming employee 1.5 at CalypsoAI where I was the founding technical member of the team and Cheif Science Officer for 4 years developing machine-learning model evaluation standards, software, and tools. My work largely focused on bringing and codifying best practices in machine-learning, and exploring various methods for incorporating measured model testing into a product.

When I’m not working, I enjoy watching hockey, going rock-climbing, run-bike-swimming my way through a triathlon, reading books, and exploring local coffee shops and breweries.

To dive more deeply into my work, checkout the my papers. To glean some of the random project and thoughts that capture my imagination from time-to-time, checkout my blog posts. Finally a pdf version of my Resumé