Teaching Assistant Professor, Postdoctoral Researcher
Department of Natural Language Processing
Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) , RIKEN-Japan
Abu Dhabi, UAE
Email: halquabeh (at) gmail (dot) com
May 2026
Our paper, “Sycophancy Hides Linearly in the Attention Heads,” has been published as a long paper at EACL 2026. We show that sycophancy is concentrated in a small set of attention heads and can be reduced through targeted linear interventions.paper
April 2026
Our paper, “WaveSSM: Multiscale State-Space Models for Non-stationary Signal Attention,” has been accepted at ICML 2026. We introduce wavelet-based state space models that better capture localized and transient patterns in physiological and audio signals. paper
September 2025
Our paper, “Uncovering the Spectral Bias in Diagonal State Space Models,” has been published at NeurIPS 2025. We introduce S4D-DFouT, a frequency-aware initialization that improves the robustness and scalability of diagonal state space models. paper
May 2025
Our paper "Where Grokking Happens: Mechanistic Insights at the Embedding Layer" is now live!
We explore how embeddings drive grokking and propose strategies to accelerate generalization.
April 2025
I was honored to be nominated to initiate and serve as the founding Chair of the Postdoctoral Research Council at MBZUAI. This council aims to represent and support the postdoctoral community, fostering research excellence, collaboration, and career development across the institute.
April 2025
I delivered a masterclass on AI in Crisis Management at the Global Summit on Crisis and Emergency Management in Abu Dhabi on April 8, 2025.
Crisit Mng.mp4
February 2025
Our research about number representations of LLMs is now live on ArXiv
February 2025
Delivered an insightful note on AI for Abu Dhabi Pension and Abu Dhabi Knowledge Center.
November 2024
I participated in the final concluding meeting with my colleagues from the Spiking Neural Network group, wrapping up our collaboration with the Technology Innovation Institute (TII).
November 2024
I represented the NLP department in the initial discussions exploring a potential collaboration with e& UAE.
September 2024
I joined MBZUAI as postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Kentaro Inui with the MINT lab in the NLP department.
August 2024
I presented a talk on State Space Models to the Spiking Neural Networks (SNN) group. You can find the slides in Notes .
I also had the opportunity to give a welcome talk on AI for New Joiners at MBZUAI.
July 2024
I presented a talk on Linearity of Relations in LLMs to machine learning department. You can find the slides in Notes
May 2024
I gave a seminar on Introduction to AI at the Jordan Youth Center, sharing insights on foundational AI concepts with an eager group of learners.
May 2024
I presented my thesis in PhD titled 'Kernelized online learning for pairwise losses".
January 2024
I led a seminar on Metric Learning in Spiking Neural Networks at MBZUAI, where we discussed cutting-edge techniques in neural network optimization.
December 2023
At the Fundamentals of AI workshop, hosted by the Ministry of Defense in the UAE, I explored the key principles of AI and its defense applications.
November 2023
I presented at the Asian Conference on Machine Learning in Istanbul, Turkey, discussing advancements in machine learning models and their applications.
October 2017
I presented two posters at the SDEWES Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia, covering energy systems and sustainability.
Hilal AlQuabeh is a postdoctoral researcher in Natural Language Processing at MBZUAI, specializing in machine learning optimization and interpretability. With a PhD in Machine Learning from MBZUAI and an MSc in Mechanical Engineering from MIT-Masdar Institute, Hilal's work spans state-space models, neural network optimization, and advancing AI robustness.
Hilal's research has spanned multiple areas of machine learning, and actively involved in several exciting projects that push the boundaries of AI and optimization techniques. You can read more about my ongoing work in the projects section.
PhD in Machine Learning at MBZUAI 2024.
Mechanical Engineering Master's from Masdar Institute and MIT collaboration 2018.
Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering from TTU 2015.
Assistant Teaching Professor (present) at MBZUAI
Postdoctoral Researcher (present) at MBZUAI.
Research Assistant (2016-2018) at Masdar Institute.
Mechanical Instructor (2018-2021) at the Institute of Applied Technology.
