Dr Alasdair Paren
Machine Learning Reseacher
Post Doc University of Oxford
Position
Research Interests
Machine Learning and “AI” are transformative technologies and we have already seen major breakthroughs powered by deep learning systems. However, as with all transformative technologies it poses a number of risks too. My research focuses on minimising these risks. I have a background in mechanical engineering an optimisation and hence I am drawn to technical problems in this space. Research questions I am especially interested in include:
- How vulnerable are frontier AI systems to attack and misuse by sophisticated adversaries?
- How best to defend frontier AI systems against attack and misuse by sophisticated adversaries?
- How can we reduce the cost of frontier AI systems on the planet?
- How can frontier AI systems be used to tackle the problems of today, such as mis- and dis-information, climate change and inequality.
Favourite Publications
Papers
Shh, don't say that! Domain Certification in LLMs
ICLR 2025 - available here
Emde C., Paren, A., Arvind P., Kayser M., Rainforth T., Lukasiewicz T., Ghanem B., Torr P., Bibi A.
Attacking Multimodal OS Agents with Malicious Image Patches
arXiv 2025 - available here
Aichberger L., Paren, A., Yarin G., Torr P., Bibi A.
Universal In-Context Approximation By Prompting Fully Recurrent Models
NeuIPS 2024 - available here
Petrov A., Lamb T., Paren, A., Torr P., Bibi A.
A Stochastic Bundle Method for Interpolating Networks
JMLR 2021 - available here
Paren, A., Berrada, L., Poudel, R., Kumar, P.
Training Fully Binary Neural Networks the Easy Way
BMVC 2022 - available here
Paren, A., R., Poudel
Experience
Profile
Postdoctoral Research Assistant
TVG University of Oxford
2022 - Present
Computer Vision Group Reseach Intern
Toshiba
2021 - 2022
Graduate Engineer
WSP
2014 - 2016
Education
Academics
DPhil - Optimisation for Machine Learning
University of Oxford
2017 - 2022
MSc - Computational Statistics and Machine Learning
University College London
2016 - 2017
MEng - Mechanical Engineering
Imperial College London
2010 - 2014
DPhil - Optimisation for Machine Learning
University of Oxford
2017 - 2022
MSc - Computational Statistics and Machine Learning
University College London
2016 - 2017
MEng - Mechanical Engineering
Imperial College London
2010 - 2014