Umang Bhatt
Affiliated Assistant Professor of Machine Learning
Research Interests
Professor Bhatt's research focuses on building trustworthy AI systems for high-stakes deployment. His group develops new algorithms and tools that support effective human-AI interaction and manage the partnership between humans and AI systems. Drawing from machine learning, cognitive science, philosophy, and law, Professor Bhatt investigates when and how AI can be trusted, integrated into decision-making, and evaluated in ecologically valid settings via lab and field experiments to understand the societal impacts of responsible AI use. His work pays particular attention to critical domains such as healthcare, education, and national security, where human oversight of AI systems is essential. Email
Prior to joining MBZUAI, Professor Bhatt served as an Assistant Professor at the University of Cambridge, where he was affiliated with the Institute for Technology and Humanity (ITH) and its Centre for Human-Inspired Artificial Intelligence (CHIA). In this role, he contributed to advancing research at the intersection of artificial intelligence, human-centered design, and societal impact, with a particular focus on developing technologies that are both ethically grounded and practically applicable. Professor Bhatt's work at Cambridge spanned interdisciplinary collaborations, integrating insights from computer science, engineering, philosophy, and the social sciences to address emerging challenges in the responsible development and deployment of AI.
- Ph.D. in Engineering from The University of Cambridge
- Master of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University
- Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University
- Center for Democracy & Technology Fellowship: 2024 – 2026
- New York University Center for Data Science Faculty Fellowship: 2023-2025
- The Alan Turing Institute Enrichment Studentship: 2021 – 2022
- Mozilla Fellowship: 2020 – 2021
- Partnership on AI Research Fellowship: 2019 – 2020
- Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence PhD Scholarship: 2019 – 2023
- Nature Human Behavior, 2024 – Building Machines that Learn and Think with People (Katherine Collins, Ilia Sucholutsky, Umang Bhatt, Kartik Chandra, Lionel Wong, Mina Lee, Cedegao Zhang, Tan Zhi-Xuan, Mark Ho, Vikash Mansinghka, Adrian Weller, Joshua Tenenbaum, Thomas Griffiths)
- IEEE Computer, 2024 – When Should Algorithms Resign? A Proposal for AI Governance (Umang Bhatt, Holli Sargeant)
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2024 – Evaluating Language Models for Mathematics through Interactions (Katherine Collins, Albert Jiang, Simon Frieder, Lionel Wong, Miri Zilka, Umang Bhatt, Thomas Lukasiewicz, Yuhuai Wu, Joshua Tenenbaum, William Hart, Timothy Gowers, Wenda Li, Adrian Weller, Mateja Jamnik)
- ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT), 2020 – Explainable Machine Learning in Deployment (Umang Bhatt, Alice Xiang, Shubham Sharma, Adrian Weller, Ankur Taly, Yunhan Jia, Joydeep Ghosh, Ruchir Puri, José M. F. Moura, Peter Eckersley)