Nolan W. Platt

I am an incoming deep learning PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania. My research focuses on making AI/ML systems more safe, trustworthy, and scalable, reducing inference costs in language models while maintaining accuracy and trust, and effectively deploying language models in mission-critical domains.

I am currently in my last semester at Virginia Tech, where I am graduating in three years with highest honors. Previously, I led R&D for Oaklet, a healthtech startup. Before that, I was a Data Science Intern at Hitachi Vantara Federal in Washington D.C., where I focused on machine learning for the federal government.

news

Jan 29, 2026	I will be attending the University of Pennsylvania as a PhD student beginning Fall 2026!
Jan 26, 2026	Selected to represent Virginia Tech at the annual ACC Meeting of the Minds (MoM) at Florida State University in April 2026.
Dec 19, 2025	Named to President’s List for Fall 2025.
Nov 26, 2025	Presented at IEEE FLLM 2025. Slides here.
Oct 10, 2025	Presented at IEEE VL/HCC 2025. Slides here.
Sep 15, 2025	My paper on mission-critical SLMs has been accepted to the IEEE International Conference on Foundation and Large Language Models (FLLM) in Vienna, Austria!
Aug 20, 2025	TAing CS 3114 (Data Structures & Algorithms) for Fall 2025.
Jul 31, 2025	Joining Berkeley-based startup Oaklet, Inc. as a Founding Engineer.
Jul 18, 2025	My paper on LLM-driven usability evaluations has been accepted to IEEE VLHCC 2025 in Raleigh, N.C.!
May 16, 2025	Named to President’s List for Spring 2025.
May 14, 2025	Joining Hitachi Vantara Federal as a Data Science Intern!
May 06, 2025	Received the VTCS 2025 Service Award
May 05, 2025	Received the VTCS 2025 David Heilman Research Award
May 02, 2025	Won Best Poster at VT CoE Interdisciplinary Symposium
Apr 22, 2025	Poster accepted to VTURCS Symposium
Apr 22, 2025	Invited to be an Ambassador for the Office of Undergraduate Research for 2025-2026
Apr 14, 2025	Poster accepted to Dennis Dean Conference
Mar 04, 2025	Invited to talk at CHCI Big Idea Workshop
Feb 20, 2025	Short paper accepted to ACM CAPWIC

selected publications

IEEE VL/HCC

Catching UX Flaws in Code: Leveraging LLMs to Identify Usability Flaws at the Development Stage

Nolan Platt, E. Luchs, and Sehrish Nizamani

In Proceedings of the 2025 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 2025

DOI arXiv Bib

@inproceedings{platt2025catching,
  title = {Catching {UX} Flaws in Code: Leveraging {LLMs} to Identify Usability Flaws at the Development Stage},
  author = {Platt, Nolan and Luchs, E. and Nizamani, Sehrish},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2025 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)},
  pages = {152--158},
  year = {2025},
  publisher = {IEEE,},
  doi = {10.1109/VL-HCC65237.2025.00024},
}

IEEE FLLM

Multi-Model Synthetic Training for Mission-Critical Small Language Models

Nolan Platt and Pragyansmita Nayak

In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Foundation and Large Language Models (IEEE FLLM), 2025

arXiv Bib

@inproceedings{platt2025multimodel,
  title = {Multi-Model Synthetic Training for Mission-Critical Small Language Models},
  author = {Platt, Nolan and Nayak, Pragyansmita},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Foundation and Large Language Models (IEEE FLLM)},
  year = {2025},
  publisher = {IEEE,},
}

etc

Outside of research, I enjoy running, biking, skiing, and scuba diving. A brief synopsis of recent and future (i.e., planned) races:

Name	Location	Date	Mileage	Time
Virginia Tech Half Marathon	Blacksburg, VA	9/27/25	13.1 miles	2:08:51 @ 9:50/mi
San Diego Holiday Half Marathon	San Diego, CA	12/20/25	13.1 miles	1:53:58 @ 8:42/mi
IRONMAN 70.3 Oceanside	Oceanside, CA	3/28/26	70.3 miles	TBD
Rock 'n' Roll Marathon	San Diego, CA	5/31/26	26.2 miles	TBD