Naomi Saphra
Kempner Research Fellow at Harvard and incoming assistant professor at Boston University, focusing on training dynamics and interpretability in deep learning with work on phase transitions, grokking, and mechanistic insights into language models.
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Mar 13, 2026 • 1h 12min
Training Is Nothing Like Learning with Naomi Saphra (Harvard)
Naomi Saphra, Kempner Research Fellow at Harvard and incoming assistant professor at Boston University, studies training dynamics and interpretability in deep learning. She explains why training is more like evolution than human learning. Topics include grokking and hidden phase transitions, symmetry breaking and head specialization, how code and tokenization shape behavior, and why run-to-run non-determinism matters.
