Bio
Hi! I am Deniz, a second-year PhD student at Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science, University of Washington (UW), co-advised by Yulia Tsvetkov and Tim Althoff.
My research interests are AI Safety, Security & Reliability, LLM Red Teaming, Abstention, Human-Centered NLP, Proactive Learning.
Before my PhD, I was assisting to mental health startups as an AI engineer while also working with UNDP Kyrgyzstan and UN Women ECA as a data analyst and engineer. I received my Bachelor's degrees in Software Engineering and Psychology from the American University Of Central Asia (AUCA) while collaborating with researchers from Google and Bard College.
If you wanna chat, do not hesitate to reach out to denizn [at] cs [dot] washington [dot] edu . As I am on my way to become the first Kyrgyzstani woman to hold a PhD in Computer Science, I am especially eager to chat with students from underrepresented groups in STEM!!
Why The Design Is Cursed
In 2025 UW CSE skit, Kate Glazko had a vision of future me continuing the legacy of inaccessible website designs once I become a faculty. The mock design made me laugh so hard that I decided to implement it irl. What can I say, I have always been a backend girlie ;p.
If you are checking this website you are most likely a recuiter and might not be interested in what I do outside of the work hours. However, in case you are actually interested, besides research, I dedicated most of my life to art and community building. You will probably see the influence in my work very soon :>