prof_pic.jpg

Aaron Lou

I lead the Strategic Explorations team at OpenAI, where we are pioneering the next frontier of large language models. Previously, I was a CS PhD student at Stanford advised by Stefano Ermon.

We are looking to recruit researchers and engineers interested in working on the bleeding edge of model development. If you think you may be a good fit, feel free to reach out to me at aaronlou@openai.com.

selected publications

  1. GPT-6 Astra
    GPT-6 Astra
    OpenAI, 2026
    Core Contributor — Algorithms
    Blog
  2. sedd.gif
    Discrete Diffusion Modeling by Estimating the Ratios of the Data Distribution
    Aaron Lou, Chenlin Meng, and Stefano Ermon
    In International Conference on Machine Learning, 2024
    Best Paper Award
    arXiv Blog Code
  3. evo.jpg
    Sequence Modeling and Design from Molecular to Genome Scale with Evo
    Eric Nguyen, Michael Poli, Matthew G. Durrant, Brian Kang, Dhruva Katrekar, David B. Li, Liam J. Bartie, Armin W. Thomas, Samuel H. King, Garyk Brixi, Jeremy Sullivan, Madelena Y. Ng, Ashley Lewis, Aaron Lou, Stefano Ermon, Stephen A. Baccus, Tina Hernandez-Boussard, Christopher Ré, Patrick D. Hsu, and Brian L. Hie
    In Science, 2024
    Cover Feature
    bioRXiv Code
  4. diffusiondpo.jpg
    Diffusion Model Alignment Using Direct Preference Optimization
    Bram Wallace, Meihua Dang, Rafael Rafailov, Linqi Zhou, Aaron Lou, Senthil Purushwalkam, Stefano Ermon, Caiming Xiong, Shafiq Joty, and Nikhil Naik
    In Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 2024
    arXiv Code