I'm a PhD student at MIT interested in behavioral machine learning, under the supervision of Prof. Pattie Maes. My current research focuses on sound (e.g. interpretable and controllable generative models that can help study affect and perception), agents (e.g. how LLMs make decisions in complex scenarios), and simulations (e.g. building behaviorally realistic learning environments and systems).
Previously, I obtained an MSc in Data Science from EPFL and a BSc in Mathematics and Computer Science from UPM. I'm a Fulbright, "la Caixa", and Rafael del Pino fellow, with nearly six years of industry experience as a full-stack software engineer, as well as an AI engineer at Logitech.
Research Interests: Machine Learning, Generative Models, Reinforcement Learning, Behavioral Science, Cognitive Science, Human-AI Interaction
Other Interests: Music, History, Geography, Writing, Chess
News
- January 2025:Two papers accepted at ICLR
- December 2023:I will be presenting a workshop paper at NeurIPS in New Orleans
- May 2023:I was awarded the "la Caixa" fellowship (2024-2026)
- September 2022:I started my graduate studies at MIT
- June 2021:I was awarded the Fulbright fellowship (2022-2024)
Selected Publications
(For a full list see Google Scholar)
Contrastive Learning from Synthetic Audio Doppelgängers
Manuel Cherep* and Nikhil Singh*
2025
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International Conference on Learning Representations
ICLR
Superficial Alignment, Subtle Divergence, and Nudge Sensitivity in LLM Decision-Making
Manuel Cherep*, Nikhil Singh*, and Pattie Maes
2024
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NeurIPS Behavioral Machine Learning Workshop
NeurIPS Behavioral ML
🏆 Oral
Creative Text-to-Audio Generation via Synthesizer Programming
Manuel Cherep*, Nikhil Singh*, and Jessica Shand
2024
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International Conference on Machine Learning
ICML
Articulatory Synthesis of Speech and Diverse Vocal Sounds via Optimization
Luke Mo*, Manuel Cherep*, Nikhil Singh*, Quinn Langford, and Pattie Maes
2024
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NeurIPS Audio Imagination Workshop
NeurIPS Audio Imagination
Bridging the Data Provenance Gap Across Text, Speech and Video
Shayne Longpre, Nikhil Singh, Manuel Cherep, Kushagra Tiwary, Joanna Materzynska, William Brannon, Robert Mahari, Manan Dey, Mohammed Hamdy, Nayan Saxena, Ahmad Mustafa Anis, Emad A Alghamdi, Vu Minh Chien, Naana Obeng-Marnu, Da Yin, Kun Qian, Yizhi Li, Minnie Liang, An Dinh, Shrestha Mohanty, Deividas Mataciunas, Tobin South, Jianguo Zhang, Ariel N Lee, Campbell S Lund, Christopher Klamm, Damien Sileo, Diganta Misra, Enrico Shippole, Kevin Klyman, Lester JV Miranda, Niklas Muennighoff, Seonghyeon Ye, Seungone Kim, Vipul Gupta, Vivek Sharma, Xuhui Zhou, Caiming Xiong, Luis Villa, Stella Biderman, Alex Pentland, Sara Hooker, Jad Kabbara
2025
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International Conference on Learning Representations
ICLR
Consent in Crisis: The Rapid Decline of the AI Data Commons
Shayne Longpre, Robert Mahari, Ariel N Lee, Campbell S Lund, Hamidah Oderinwale, William Brannon, Nayan Saxena, Naana Obeng-Marnu, Tobin South, Cole J Hunter, Kevin Klyman, Christopher Klamm, Hailey Schoelkopf, Nikhil Singh, Manuel Cherep, Ahmad Mustafa Anis, An Dinh, Caroline Shamiso Chitongo, Da Yin, Damien Sileo, Deividas Mataciunas, Diganta Misra, Emad A Alghamdi, Enrico Shippole, Jianguo Zhang, Joanna Materzynska, Kun Qian, Kushagra Tiwary, Lester James Validad Miranda, Manan Dey, Minnie Liang, Mohammed Hamdy, Niklas Muennighoff, Seonghyeon Ye, Seungone Kim, Shrestha Mohanty, Vipul Gupta, Vivek Sharma, Vu Minh Chien, Xuhui Zhou, LI Yizhi, Caiming Xiong, Luis Villa, Stella Biderman, Hanlin Li, Daphne Ippolito, Sara Hooker, Jad Kabbara, Alex Pentland
2024
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Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems
NeurIPS Datasets and Benchmarks