I am a deep learning engineer at NVIDIA, working on frontier model co-design for efficient and agentic inference. Previously, I was an applied researcher at Microsoft Research + M365 Copilot focusing on retrieval, knowledge, and LLM-as-a-judge. I graduated from the University of Michigan in May 2022 with a PhD in machine learning, focusing on graphs, NLP, and Transformers.

See Google Scholar for an up-to-date publications list.

Contact: tarasafavi [at] microsoft.com

Recent news

• June 2026: Took a break and am back at it! I am heading to NVIDIA to research frontier model co-design for agentic, long-context workloads. Thanks to my amazing collaborators and mentors for a wonderful four years at Microsoft.
• November 2022: Looking forward to giving virtual keynotes on graphs + LMs at the MLoG and KG workshops at ICDM 2022. Thank you to the organizers for the invitations!
• November 2022: Really honored to receive the Kuck Dissertation Prize from UMich CSE for my dissertation! Thank you!
• November 2022: Our paper combining graphs and language models with CascadER will be presented orally at AKBC 2022! Joint work with my awesome collaborators Doug and Tom.
• July 2022: Started at MSR Redmond.
• July 2022: Got an ICML Outstanding Reviewer Award!
• May 2022: Successfully defended my PhD thesis! Thank you to my committee Danai, Paul, Kevyn, and Lu.

Misc (updated periodically)

• My advice on applying for the NSF GRFP, last updated in 2020
• All-time favorite books/audiobooks
  • Middlemarch by George Eliot - wry, perceptive, expansive. Narrated by the incomparable Juliet Stevenson
  • The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov - fantastical, subversive, romantic
  • The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton - elegant, poignant, ironic
  • David Copperfield by Charles Dickens - vivid, warmhearted, autobiographical. Masterful narration by Richard Armitage
  • East of Eden by John Steinbeck - sprawling, allegorical, tender
  • Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin - confessional, lyrical, devastating
  • Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir - hopeful, buoyant, endearing
  • Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray - biting, cynical, humorous
  • The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro - elegiac, restrained, melancholy
  • The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower - charming, lighthearted, episodic. Fantastic narration by Genevieve Gaunt
  • The Likeness by Tana French - atmospheric, suspenseful, psychological
  • The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe - explosive, cinematic, maximalist
  • The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson - intricate, surreal, operatic
  • War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - epic, philosophical, humane. Pevear and Volokhonsky English translation