Skyler Hallinan

Skyler

I am a Computer Science Ph.D. student at the University of Southern California advised by Xiang Ren and currently a research intern at Samaya AI. Previously, I completed a B.S./M.S. in computer science at the University of Washington, where I was fortunate to work with Yejin Choi. I also previously completed research internships at Apple and Amazon AWS.

My research centers on data-driven and algorithmic approaches to building language models with stronger, more reliable reasoning abilities. I investigate three interconnected areas:

  • Understanding how data shapes model behavior.
    I develop strategies to query and understand models' data (CoLM 2025), and techniques to see how the effects of this data materialize downstream (ICLR 2025).
  • Lightweight yet effective methods to advance reasoning.
    I improve reasoning in models through strategic algorithms rather than brute-force. My work consists of algorithmic approaches for data curation (NeurIPS 2025*; Findings of EMNLP 2023) and inference-time algorithms to adapt models (EMNLP 2023; ACL 2023; EMNLP 2024).
  • Enabling autonomous reasoning.
    I aim to transform language models into language agents. I develop autonomous frameworks for agents (NeurIPS 2023) and augment their capabilities through dynamic knowledge generation and tool integration (ACL 2022; EMNLP 2022).

Email: shallina [at] usc.edu

Links: [Google Scholar] [Twitter] [Github] [CV] [Bio] [Semantic Scholar]

Selected Publications

(for the full list of my publications, please see my Google Scholar)

Selected All

Invited Talks

  • 2025 - "The Surprising Effectiveness of Membership Inference with Simple N-Gram Metrics"
    USC ISI Seminar [Video]
  • 2024 - "Small but Mighty: Empowering Small Language Models to Outperform Their Larger Counterparts"
    Qualcomm, San Diego, CA (Joint Talk with Jillian Fisher)

Media Coverage

  • 2024 - "AI writing is improving, but it still canā€™t match human creativity"
    Science [Article]
  • 2021 - "ā€œEvery single one of you has what it takes to do great thingsā€: A tribute to the Allen School Class of 2021"
    Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering [Article]
  • 2020 - "Six Allen School undergraduates recognized for excellence in research"
    Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering [Article]

Honors & Awards

  • (2024) Anneberg PhD Fellowship
  • (2021) Outstanding Senior Award, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering
  • (2021) Dean's Medal Nomination, College of Arts & Sciences, University of Washington
  • (2020) Levinson Emerging Scholars Award, University of Washington
  • (2019) Stratos-Stephen Endowed Scholar, University of Washington
  • (2019) Resarch Conference Travel Award, University of Washington
  • (2018) Robert B. Rodal Endowed Scholar, University of Washington

Teaching Experience

  • (Winter, 2023) Head TA @ CSE 573 (Graduate Artifical Intelligence) at University of Washington
  • (Winter, 2024) TA @ CSE 447/517 (Undergraduate/Graduate NLP) at University of Washington
  • (Spring, 2021 - Autumn 2023) TA @ CSE 473 (Undergraduate Artifical Intelligence) at University of Washington