Kilian Merkelbach

PhD in AI Applied ML Researcher AI safety

I'm moving from applied LLM research into frontier AI safety. Through Constellation's Astra Fellowship, I'm working with Marius Hobbhahn (Apollo Research) on automated red-teaming for a scheming monitor, and I've trained deliberative monitors for black-box scheming detection. I care about whether we can reliably tell when a model is scheming. My transition into AI safety is supported by Coefficient Giving.

This builds on almost a decade in ML: a PhD at RWTH Aachen on making sense of complex temporal data using autoencoders, and fine-tuning and evaluating LLMs on eBay's search team. If you're working on scheming, evaluations, or monitoring, let's talk.