About Me
Hi! I'm a second year ELLIS PhD student working on language models at the MPI for Intelligent Systems advised by Prof. Bernhard Schölkopf, and supported by the Hector Fellow Academy.
I am interested in understanding the internal mechanisms of large language models (LLMs), particularly their "world models"—the structured representations they develop to interpret and make sense of data. I have also recently started to work on post-training.
Before starting my PhD, I did a BSc in mathematics at EPFL and spent one year at ENS in Paris (Ulm). I then transitioned to pursue a MSc in Neural Systems and Computation at ETH Zürich. During my master, I worked by Prof. Maneesh Sahani at the Gatbsy Unit in London on non-generative representation learning.
Florent Draye
PhD Student in Machine Learning
MPI-IS, Germany
Education
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PhD, Machine Learning
Max Planck Institute | 2025–Present
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MSc, Neural Systems and Computation
ETH Zürich | 2022–2024
GPA: 5.9/6
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Exchange Program, Mathematics
Ecole Normale Supérieure (Ulm) | 2021–2022
GPA: 18.3/20
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BSc, Mathematics
EPFL | 2019–2022
GPA: 5.88/6
Prizes
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Best Bachelor Average Grade (1500$)
Awarded for achieving the highest bachelor average (5.88/6) among 1214 graduates, 2022.
EPFL, 2019–2022
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Part III International Scholarship – University of Cambridge
Awarded based on academic potential for the Master of Applied Mathematics (Part III), declined.
University of Cambridge, 2022
Experiences
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Machine Learning Research Intern
Gatsby Unit UCL, 09/2023-02/2023
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Data Science Intern
Mindmaze, Summer 2023
News
Released CLT-Forge library
March 2026
I released CLT-Forge, a library for Cross-Layer Transcoders and mechanistic interpretability.
Just started my PhD with Prof. Bernhard Schölkopf
January 2025
Research
A Review on the Universal Approximation Theorems of Artificial Neural Networks
U Faure†, F Draye†, Bachelor Thesis 2022
† Equal contribution
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