Mohammad Anas Jawad

Mohammad Anas Jawad

PhD Student in Computer Science at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC)

I am a CS PhD student at UIC advised by Professor Cornelia Caragea. My research lies at the intersection of deep learning and trustworthy AI, with a focus on large language model calibration and reasoning. I develop methods to improve uncertainty estimation and reasoning reliability in LLMs, spanning post-hoc calibration techniques and post-training approaches, aiming to make model predictions both accurate and well-calibrated under distribution shift.

Recent News

July 2026

Presented CaliDist Work at ICML 2026 Poster Session

Presented our latest paper "CaliDist: Calibrating Large Language Models via Behavioral Robustness to Distraction" at the ICML 2026 poster session in Seoul, South Korea!

May 2026

Paper Accepted at ICML 2026!

Our paper "CaliDist: Calibrating Large Language Models via Behavioral Robustness to Distraction" has been accepted for publication!

Aug 2025

Organized Bengali Code Generation Shared Task

Co-organized the shared task at BLP @ IJCNLP-AACL 2025 .

Research Focus

My research focuses on improving the reliability and reasoning capabilities of large language models, with an emphasis on uncertainty estimation, calibration, and reasoning reliability — through both post-hoc and post-training approaches. I am particularly interested in developing techniques that make model confidence meaningful and decision-relevant, especially under distribution shift and semantic perturbations. A central direction of my work investigates how model confidence and reasoning accuracy can be jointly improved — exploring both post-hoc adjustments and post-training interventions to bridge the gap between well-calibrated predictions and correct inference. More broadly, I aim to understand how model behavior changes under controlled perturbations and how these signals can be leveraged to build more robust, interpretable, and trustworthy AI systems.

Uncertainty Calibration for LLMs

Developing post-hoc and training-aware methods to improve the reliability of large language model confidence estimates, with a focus on calibration under distribution shift and perturbation-based evaluation. The goal is to ensure predictive probabilities are well-aligned with true correctness across diverse settings.

Reasoning Reliability in LLMs

Exploring how to improve reasoning accuracy in large language models through both post-hoc and post-training methods. This includes perturbation-based inference techniques, lightweight verification signals, and training-time interventions to induce and select higher-quality reasoning chains.

Education

PhD Student

PhD in Computer Science

University of Illinois Chicago (UIC)

GPA: 4.00 / 4.00

Advisor: Professor Cornelia Caragea

BSc Graduate

BSc in Computer Science & Eng.

Islamic University of Technology (IUT)

GPA: 3.81 / 4.00

Honors & Certifications

OIC Full Scholarship Merit-based full funding awarded by Organisation of Islamic Cooperation
DeepLearning.AI Certifications Neural Networks, Deep Learning, & Supervised Machine Learning

Technical Toolkit

ML & Core Research

PyTorch HuggingFace Model Inference Calibration vLLM TensorFlow Keras scikit-learn nltk

Languages

Python C/C++ JavaScript Java Shell Scripting

Data Processing

NumPy Pandas SciPy

Databases

MySQL PostgreSQL SQLite

Web, Mobile & Tools

Angular HTML/CSS Bootstrap Android Studio Git Latex / Overleaf

Publications

Selected publications and preprints.

ICML 2026 Main Conference

CaliDist: Calibrating Large Language Models via Behavioral Robustness to Distraction

Mohammad Anas Jawad, Cornelia Caragea.

We introduce CaliDist, a novel framework that calibrates LLM confidence by measuring the model's behavioral robustness to semantic distractions.

ICML Poster Code
BLP-2025 Workshop

Overview of BLP-2025 task 2: Code generation in bangla

Nishat Raihan, Mohammad Anas Jawad, Md Mezbaur Rahman, Noshin Ulfat, Pranav Gupta, Mehrab Mustafy Rahman, Santu Karmaker, Marcos Zampieri.

This paper details a shared task evaluating generative AI systems on producing executable Python code from Bangla prompts, highlighting that multi-method engineering pipelines consistently outperformed individual model solutions.

ACL Anthology
arXiv Preprint

Renovo: Sensor-based visual assistive technology for physiotherapists in the rehabilitation of stroke patients with upper limb motor impairments

Mohammad Ridwan Kabir, Mohammad Ishrak Abedin, Mohaimin Ehsan, Mohammad Anas Jawad, Hasan Mahmud, Md Kamrul Hasan.

This study introduces a wearable IMU sensor system and a non-machine-learning mathematical framework that assists physiotherapists by providing real-time 3D tracking, visualization, and unbiased quantitative progress scores for stroke rehabilitation patients.

arXiv

Professional Experience

Graduate Assistant (Research & Teaching)

University of Illinois Chicago (dl4nlpspace Lab)

Aug 2023 - Present
  • Conduct advanced core research targeting model calibration, uncertainty estimation, and logical reasoning pipelines in Large Language Models (LLMs).
  • Instruct practical lab modules and host office hours for Discrete Math, Programming Practicum, and Systems Programming.

Lecturer

Islamic University of Technology (IUT)

Jan 2020 - Jul 2023
  • Designed academic curricula and delivered lectures for courses on Data Mining, Database Management Systems, Web Architecture, Visual Programming, and Object-Oriented Concepts.
  • Actively collaborated on data mining research as a core investigator with the Network and Data Analysis Group (NDAG).

Software Development Intern

Nilavo Technologies Ltd.

Nov 2018 - Dec 2018

Engineered and optimized backend relational database integrations with PostgreSQL under the Spring framework and refactored responsive dashboard views using AngularJS and Bootstrap.

Selected Projects

Information Retrieval

Context Optimization in Advanced RAG: Synthesize vs. Re-order

Developed a modular RAG pipeline comparing context synthesis and sentence-level re-ordering strategies using Llama-3.1-8B. Implemented DPR retrieval with FAISS and MS-MARCO re-ranking, improving Exact Match and semantic relevancy on HotpotQA.

PyTorch Llama-3.1-8B Gemini 2.0 Flash FAISS SQLite
Graph Machine Learning

Semi-Supervised Node Classification with LLMs

Designed a semi-supervised graph learning framework combining Llama-3.1-8B annotation with GCN-based pseudo-labeling. Implemented difficulty-aware filtering and confidence-based selection, outperforming supervised baselines on the Cora dataset under limited-label settings.

Llama-3.1-8B GNNs PyTorch Geometric Cora Dataset
Recommender Systems

Wide & Deep Recommender System on XWine Dataset

Built a Wide & Deep recommendation model in TensorFlow for the XWines dataset using feature crosses and deep neural representations. Achieved improved validation MAE over standard baseline approaches.

TensorFlow Keras Pandas scikit-learn
Natural Language Processing

Automated Essay Scoring & ML Classification

Developed an NLP-based essay evaluation system using linguistic and semantic features extracted with Word2Vec and Stanford Stanza. Trained MLP and Logistic Regression models for automated grading prediction.

Python NLTK SpaCy Stanza scikit-learn

Get in Touch

I'm always open to discussing research collaborations or opportunities.

BibTeX copied to clipboard!