From Student Leader to AI Researcher
I began my career in Nigeria as one of just 42 Inaugural undergraduates at Koladaisi University (2017–2021), elected Student Body President for three-and-a-half years. I structured the entire campus life balancing academics, spirituality, and social events forging partnerships with brands, other universities, and NGOs. Under my leadership, the university grew from 42 to over 2,000 students, and I served on key committees (publications, disciplinary, welfare), advocating for my peers at every turn.
Bridging Sales, Marketing & Technology
After graduation (and Nigeria’s compulsory National Youth Service Corp), I co-founded Copy-Sensei, a marketing agency that helped businesses meet growth targets through data-driven campaigns. Concurrently, I attended the University of Pennsylvania’s Experience Labs Fellowship program (Strategic Data & AI track), under Prof. Juan Martin Maglione. As part of the program, I interned at AtkCo, a startup honing my agile product instincts first as a software developer/data analytics intern and then business analyst, and soon after, Invisible Technologies recruited me through Upenn to train client models late 2022 under research. First as an advanced data trainer, then as part of their “OG” coding team.
Landing at Cornell: Sales + Engineering → Research
That blend of client-facing sales acumen and engineering rekindled my flair for AI research. In Fall 2023, I joined Cornell University’s two-year, fully funded research master’s in Computer Science (cohort of 12), working with Claire Cardie on NLP to improve reasoning-capable language models. My initial goal: develop AI systems that not only improve sales conversions and reduce churn rate, but also deliver transparent insights in domains like education, law, and finance.
My research
To get started, I recommend reading my post on the fundamental problems in language model reasoning, followed by a deeper dive into my work on a new approach to tackle them. I'm thankful to have been part of a fully-funded 2-year MS research program at Cornell University where my advisor has been instrumental to my research quest and every professor's class I took has shaped my understanding of this fascinating field.