Osama Hanna
Research Scientist at Meta Superintelligence Lab
Ph.D. UCLA '24
About Me
I am a Research Scientist at Meta Superintelligence Lab (MSL) in Menlo Park. My current work focuses on Post-training and Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) for large language models, including leading efforts for post-training the audio Llama model family.
I completed my Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at UCLA (2024), advised by Prof. Christina Fragouli and Prof. Lin F. Yang. My doctoral research on online learning and information theory was recognized with the UCLA Distinguished Ph.D. Dissertation Research Award (2024-2025).
My background is in mathematics and theoretical engineering. During my time at UCLA, I dove deep into graduate-level optimization, probability theory, and mathematical logic (including Gödel’s theorems and axiomatic set theory); early in my journey, I ranked 1st in the Egyptian Math Olympiad. Today, I enjoy connecting those theoretical concepts to practical, large-scale AI alignment and efficiency problems.
Research Interests
GenAI & LLMs
Post-training, RLHF, Alignment, and Efficient Inference.
Reinforcement Learning
MDPs, Bandits, Regret Minimization, and Sample Efficiency.
Information Theory
Fundamental Limits of Learning and Lower Bounds, Compression.
Optimization
Theory and Applications.
News
Selected Publications
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Invited Talks
- [Feb 2026] Information Theory and Applications Workshop (ITA)
- [May 2025] MESR Mentorship Program for Egyptian Students and Researchers
- [Oct 2024] IEEE Industry Engagement
- [April 2024] Stanford University, EE Dept. Seminar
- [April 2024] University of California, Riverside, CS Dept. Seminar
- [Feb 2024] University of California, Berkeley, EECS Dept. Seminar
- [Jan 2024] University of Southern California (USC), ECE Dept. Seminar
- [Nov 2023] The Reinforcement Learning Theory Seminar Series
- [Nov 2023] University of California, Irvine CS Dept. Seminar
- [July 2023] The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)
- [July 2023] City University of Hong Kong
- [Jan 2022] ICML Workshop on RL Theory (Spotlight Talk)
Service & Mentoring
Mentoring
I have had the privilege of mentoring Ph.D. students (Merve Karakas, Xinlin Li, Kaan Buyukkalayci) and undergraduates at UCLA. At Meta, I manage research interns (e.g., Yancheng Wang, Maohao Shen).
Conference Reviewing
NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, AISTATS, ALT, IEEE ISIT, IEEE GLOBECOM, IEEE JSAIT, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Mathematics of Operations Research, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Comm., IEEE Comm. Letters.
Community
Organize: Meta, GenAI LLM Compression Reading Group
UCLA EAA Student Projects Judge [Oct. 2025]
Personal Things
Experience
Meta
Research Scientist, Superintelligence Lab
RLHF and post-training pipelines for multi-modal Llama models.
UCLA
Graduate Research Assistant
Sample and computationally efficient online learning.
Meta AI
Research Intern
Developed memory efficient techniques for large models inference.
Education
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Ph.D. in Electrical & Computer Engineering
Advisors: Prof. Christina Fragouli, Lin F. Yang. GPA: 4.0/4.0.
Distinguished Ph.D. Dissertation Research Award.
Nile University, Egypt
M.Sc. in ECE
Cairo University, Egypt
B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering