Drishti Goel

I am a second-year PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where I work at the OnCARE Lab, advised by Prof. Koustuv Saha. In Summer 2026, I was a Research Intern with the Future Experiences (FX) team at Microsoft Research, advised by Dr. Martez Mott and Dr. Denae Ford Robinson. Before my PhD, I spent two years as a Predoctoral Research Fellow at Microsoft's M365 Research team, advised by Supriyo Ghosh and Chetan Bansal. There, my work focused on advancing cloud system reliability by driving innovations using large language models (LLMs) and smaller language models (SLMs), to enhance operational efficiency and root cause analysis of complex incidents. My work in these areas has culminated in publications at top-tier venues and has also been adopted by over 150 teams, and projected to scale over 500 teams at Microsoft.

I completed my bachelors in Electrical and Computer Science from the Dayalbagh Educational Institute, where I was fortunate to have worked with and mentored by Prof. C. Patvardhan, Swathi Swaminathan from the Grahn Lab, Lt. Prof. Hansraj K. and Dr. V. Prem Prakash

My current research interests are as follows:

• Human-centered Artificial Intelligence
• Large Language Models (LLMs) and Domain-Specific AI Adaptations
• Health-AI and Responsible AI in Real-World Applications
• AI for Software Engineering and Developer Productivity

I am particularly excited about the transformative era of artificial intelligence which we are witnessing, and want to make these technologies human-centered, and extend these to real-world applications in the industry, academia and society.