Claudio Fanconi

Claudio Fanconi


Ph.D. Student in Machine Learning, University of Cambridge


Hello! I am second-year PhD student in Machine Learning and AI for Medicine at the University of Cambridge advised by Mihaela van der Schaar.

Previously, I graduated with a Bachelor's and Master's from ETH Zürich in Information Technology and Electrical Engineering with a focus on Machine Learning (ML). I conducted my Master's thesis under the supervision of Tina Hernandez-Boussard at Stanford University, researching predictive uncertainty and natural language processing to identify patients at risk of acute care use.

My current research topics are:
(i) the application of ML in high-stakes environments such as medicine
(ii) using machine learning to enhance human decision-making
(iii) the alignment and reasoning of large language models (LLMs).

Reach out to me with anything you want to talk about!

Additionally, please check out the Fanconi Cancer Foundation and their initiatives against Fanconi Anemia.


Updates

  • (2026/01) 📝 First-author paper accepted (poster) at the ICLR Workshop on LLM Reasoning (Paper): Researches adversarial inverse reinforcement learning to elicit reasoning in LLMs.
  • (2026/01) 📝 Paper with Paulius accepted (spotlight) at the ICLR Workshop on Recursive Self-Improvement: Investigates tiny autoregressive recursive networks.
  • (2025/09) 📝 First-author paper accepted (poster) at NeurIPS 2025 (Paper): Researches cost-efficient cascaded-LLM Systems for decision-making.
  • (2025/06) 📝 Co-first-author paper accepted (oral, top 10%) at the ICML 2025 Workshop on AI Alignment together with Kasia (Paper): Develops a method for few-shot steerable alignment of rewards and policy models with neural processes.
  • (2024/09) 📝 Co-first-author paper accepted (poster) at NeurIPS 2024 (Paper): Demonstrates LLMs generating optimisation algorithms for their preference learning.
  • (2024/07) 📝 Published in JAMIA (Paper): Demonstrates BERT models can effectively identify depression concerns in cancer patients' portal messages.
  • (2024/04) 🎉 I have officially started a PhD in Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Mihaela van der Schaar.

Education

University of Cambridge

Ph.D. Student in Machine Learning
University of Cambridge Apr. 2024 - Present

Stanford University

Visiting Student Researcher
Stanford University Mar. 2022 - Oct. 2022

ETH Zürich

M.Sc. Information Technology and Electrical Engineering
ETH Zürich Sept. 2020 - Oct. 2022

Chinese University of Hong Kong

Exchange Semester
Chinese University of Hong Kong Sept. 2018 - Dec. 2018

ETH Zürich

B.Sc. Information Technology and Electrical Engineering
ETH Zürich Sept. 2016 - Aug. 2019


Professional Experience

Sony AI

Junior Research Scientist
Sony AI Mar. 2023 - Dec. 2023

McKinsey & Company

Management Consulting Intern
McKinsey & Company Jun. 2020 - Aug. 2020

IBM

Machine Learning Research Intern
IBM Oct. 2019 - Mar. 2020