Fabrice Harel-Canada

Fabrice Harel-Canada

Computer Science PhD

University of California, Los Angeles

Biography

I completed my PhD in Computer Science at UCLA! The main focus of my work was in tackling a big challenge in AI: how do we really know if an AI system is reliable, useful, and trustworthy? I explored new ways to evaluate them, looking closely at everything from data diversity, quality, and provenance to how people truly experience AI-generated work.

I was fortunate to be advised by Prof. Miryung Kim and to collaborate with incredible mentors like Prof. Nanyun (Violet) Peng (PLUS Lab), Prof. Quanquan Gu (Statistical ML Lab), and Prof. Amit Sahai.

During my PhD, I got to dive into some fascinating areas:

  • Making AI More Robust & Secure: This meant stress-testing models through fuzzing and adversarial attacks, refining AI testing metrics (like looking beyond neuron coverage), and for AI content provenance, critically re-evaluating theoretical limits on watermarking—showing that robust techniques for verifying authorship can be more resilient and quality-preserving than previously assumed.
  • Innovating with Data: I worked on new ways to augment data (like sibylvariant transformations and feature-aware methods) to make AI models smarter and more generalizable and robust to adversarial attacks.
  • Understanding Human-Perceived AI Quality: I led some award-winning research to measure subjective qualities like engagement, authenticity, and empathy through the stories that LLMs tell. We also used these ideas to build specialized models for applied tasks, like high-accuracy drug detection in medical texts, and to think about cultural inclusion in vision language models.

All this directly inspired what I’m doing now: founding Kairno! We’re using advanced AI to automate and elevate the research review process. Our goal is to critique the meat of your work and provide actionable feedback accessible to everyone doing scientific work. If this mission excites you or you’d like to collaborate, I’d love to connect!

Education

  • PhD | Computer Science, 2025

    University of California, Los Angeles

  • MS | Computer Science, 2019

    University of California, Los Angeles

  • BS | Information Systems, 2012

    University of Florida

Publications

Enhancing Substance Use Detection in Clinical Notes with Large Language Models

Identifying substance use behaviors in electronic health records (EHRs) is challenging because critical details are often buried in …

Experience

 
 
 
 
 

Teaching Assistant | Intro to Computer Science [CS 31]

UCLA

Sep 2023 – Dec 2023 Los Angeles, California
  • Facilitated a robust understanding of C++ fundamentals for introductory computer science students, providing guidance on programming concepts, debugging techniques, and hands-on problem-solving support.
 
 
 
 
 

Teaching Assistant | Software Engineering [CS 130]

UCLA

Mar 2023 – Jun 2023 Los Angeles, California
  • Collaborated with a team of Google instructors to facilitate cutting-edge learning experiences and contributing to the development of students’ technical skills.
 
 
 
 
 

Teaching Assistant | Software Engineering [CS 130]

UCLA

Sep 2020 – Dec 2020 Los Angeles, California
  • Facilitated hands-on learning in software engineering by guiding 50+ undergraduates through coding exercises and debugging, enhancing their grasp of complex algorithms and object-oriented programming.
  • Guided teams in designing and executing bespoke capstone projects, including a plant identification app, equipping them with practical experience in full-stack development and collaborative design.
 
 
 
 
 

Research Assistant

UCLA

Jul 2020 – Oct 2020 Los Angeles, California
  • Conducting LDA topic modeling and sentence clause-level sentiment analysis using BERT transformers on millions of Amazon and Glassdoor product / employer reviews.
 
 
 
 
 

Graduate Student Researcher

UCLA

Jun 2019 – Jun 2025 Los Angeles, California
  • Pioneered novel methodologies for robust AI system evaluation, focusing on enhancing reliability and trustworthiness through data-centric and human-in-the-loop approaches.
  • Led award-winning research (EMNLP Outstanding Paper, Top 0.25%) in developing and validating new metrics for assessing nuanced, human-perceived qualities (e.g., psychological depth, engagement, linguistic diversity) in large language model outputs via extensive human studies.
  • Engineered innovative data augmentation techniques (incl. sibylvariant transformations, feature-aware methods) and open-source tools to improve AI model generalization, robustness against adversarial attacks, and textual diversity.
  • Investigated and developed solutions for AI content integrity, including advanced watermarking for provenance tracking and specialized models for tasks like high-accuracy drug detection in medical texts.
  • Researched critical aspects of AI fairness, including testing metric reliability (neuron coverage, fuzzing) and strategies for improving cultural inclusion in AI systems.
 
 
 
 
 

Reader | Database Systems [CS 143]

UCLA

Jan 2019 – Mar 2019 Los Angeles, California
  • Developed test cases for a Spark project in Scala, actively addressed student questions, and assisted students with project work
 
 
 
 
 

CEO

Axenzi Consultants

Oct 2018 – Apr 2023 Los Angeles, California
  • Helping clients to plan and implement technology projects - specs, devops, and app / database development
 
 
 
 
 

Project Manager + Developer Team Lead

Verox Tech

Jul 2015 – Sep 2018 Los Angeles, California
  • Designed and successfully launched a smarter insurance app by building, motivating, and guiding a team of 23

  • Contributed 100s of check-ins, primarily consisting of C# Web APIs and database tables, triggers, sprocs, and T-SQL scripts

  • Designed and implemented a 3-system legacy data migration

  • Responsible for producing, coordinating and reviewing nearly every aspect of the SDLC:

    • code reviews and code optimization
    • requirements and spec generation
    • database design + SSIS + SSRS
    • technical documentation
    • UI design standards
    • product design
    • server setup / config
    • build and deployment scripts
 
 
 
 
 

Business + Data Analyst

People’s Trust Insurance

Dec 2012 – Sep 2018 Deerfield Beach, Florida
  • Go-to data expert for executives to produce hundreds of reports and analyses for pivotal decision making at the executive level
  • Developed numerous front-end / back-end application features that were successfully deployed into production to automate tedious and time-intensive workflows
  • Performed continuous requirements gathering & demos with business stakeholders to support 60+ sprints of development for both applications and business intelligence teams, including the transition to a new policy and claim management system

Projects

Predicting Stock Prices with Pyro and GNNs

Learning company relations from stock price movements alone can be extremely profitable.

MODE: Automated Neural Network Debugging Replication Project

Open source implementation based on the original paper by Shiqing Ma et al. with a comparison of newly considered distance functions for selecting next training inputs.

Interests

Python

SQL

.NET

AI

Statistics

Maths

US Politics

Activism

Philosophy

Games

Veganism

Travel

Contact

  • 420 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90095