Contact Information
| Name | Atif Quamar |
| Professional Title | Visiting Researcher at MBZUAI |
| mohammad.atif@mbzuai.ac.ae | |
| Website | https://www.atifquamar.com |
Summary
I like to understand how foundation models reason, how their reasoning abilities emerge through training, and how we can make that reasoning more efficient and trustworthy. Much of my work spans language and vision, with a focus on training and aligning models to be safe and aligned with human values.
Education
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M.Sc in Machine Learning
Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), Abu Dhabi, UAE
Machine Learning
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B.Tech in Computer Science and Biosciences
Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Delhi, India
Computer Science and Computational Biology
Experience
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Visiting Researcher
Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence
Developing training and inference-time methods to improve reasoning in language models, including reinforcement learning, self-consistency, and test-time inference strategies, with applications to mathematical reasoning and coding while reducing unreliable reasoning paths.
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Research Intern
University of Virginia
Developed a drift-resilient memory framework for code-execution agents using KL-constrained adapter updates, mitigating embedding distribution shifts during online learning to reduce unsafe code generation without compromising task success rates.
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Research Intern
University of California San Diego
Proposed a multimodal Chain-of-Thought framework that interleaves text with latent visual representations in VLMs, with a two-stage SFT + RL training setup for modality switching, achieving strong gains across 11 multimodal reasoning benchmarks.
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Research Intern
Purdue University
Studied Bayesian sampling and inference-time alignment methods for language models, improving response quality and steering outputs toward harmlessness and positive sentiment.
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Co-Founder
Insituate
Founded Insituate and grew it to $250K ARR, building on-premise AI agents using open-source LLMs and RAG systems for enterprise use cases; deployments included Singapore Judiciary, Indian High Courts, Mizuho Bank, and PNC Bank.
Publications
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2026 STARS: Synchronous Token Alignment for Robust Supervision in Large Language Models
ICML 2026 - Structured Probabilistic Inference & Generative Modeling Workshop
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2025 Logit-Entropy Adaptive Stopping Heuristic for Efficient Chain-of-Thought Reasoning
NeurIPS 2025 - Efficient Reasoning Workshop
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2026 Reliable Chain-of-Thought via Prefix Consistency
Under Review
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2025 -
2025 Decoding Histone Modification Signatures of Non-Coding RNAs via Foundation Models
NeurIPS 2025 - FM4LS Workshop