ARCS Oregon Scholar Derek Lilienthal knows “the field of AI moves quickly, and being able to generate and refine impactful ideas at speed is a crucial skill.”  He’s pushed himself in the first year of his PhD program examining Artificial Intelligence, while simultaneously working part-time at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington.  Lilienthal, an ARCS Scholar at Oregon State University, admits his dual roles “have been demanding. I often work long hours, but I genuinely enjoy both my research and my work at PNNL.”  

His PhD research focuses on the privacy and security of large-language models (LLMs).   

Lilienthal says his first year at OSU has required shifting his mindset. “I come from a software engineering background, which is great at building systems.” Research, he says, requires a focus on identifying and framing deeper scientific problems.  His future goal, he states, “is to scientifically advance the safety and security of AI agents” which will require a “researchers’ mindset to analyze problems, identify limitations in prior work, and iterate on ideas efficiently.”  

At his work at Pacific Northwest National Lab, he is a software engineer developing AI applications for various U.S. government agencies. His role is collaborating with engineers and scientists to develop, train, and deploy generative AI models across high-performance computing clusters and cloud environments. While only some of his research overlaps with his role as a software engineer, Lilienthal hopes to transition to more research in the future at PNNL, one of the huge national labs in the U.S. https://www.pnnl.gov/  

Lilienthal began at PNNL in January 2024 in the High-Performance Computing Group, which is also known for working with supercomputers. He had previously completed AI-related projects during internships at other companies. When the opportunity arose to join PNNL and work with AI on supercomputers, he was eager to gain the experience. He hopes to take skills learned at PNNL and apply them to his PhD research.  

As AI has become more available to the public, Lilienthal says “what’s important to remember about AI is that, at its core, any AI model is just math. It’s easy to forget that something like ChatGPT is fundamentally a series of matrix multiplications and non-linear applications. While it’s undeniably impressive that an applied math problem can produce the kinds of capabilities we see in the news or experience firsthand, we must remember that AI is still a tool – not something with real ‘ intelligence.’ “  

Lilienthal says the ARCS Oregon award “greatly supported my wife and I by helping reimburse our relocation expenses” to come to OSU for his PhD, and “allowing us to pay down some credit card debt.”  

His advisor at OSU, College of Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, is Dr. Sanghyun Hong. Sanghyun Hong | College of Engineering | Oregon State University