Hi! I am Bangzhao Shu (舒邦照), currently a second year Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University, advised by Professor Mai ElSherief.

Broadly, my research lies at the intersection of human-centered NLP and LLM safety.

My current research focuses on the following themes:
(1) Emotional and Social Intelligence in LLMs: Human communication is deeply shaped by emotions and social norms. I study how language models perceive, reason about, and respond to emotional and social contexts, and develop evaluation frameworks to assess their behavior.

(2) Mechanistic Interpretability of LLMs:Large language models are often treated as black boxes, making it difficult to understand and control their behavior. I investigate the internal mechanisms that give rise to model behavior, with the goal of improving interpretability and reliability.

(3) Alignment and Safety of LLMs: Ensuring that model behavior is reliable, safe, and aligned with human values is critical. I study methods for evaluating and improving alignment, including identifying failure modes and developing interventions to guide model behavior.

Before starting my Ph.D., I earned dual master’s degrees in Information and Environment & Sustainability from the University of Michigan. I worked under the guidance of professor David Jurgens at UMSI and professor Yuhao Kang at the University of Texas, Austin.