Kiran Tomlinson

Kiran Tomlinson

Senior Researcher

Microsoft Research

About

I’m a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research in the AI Interaction and Learning group, where I’m working on understanding and improving the interactions between people and their LLM-based assistants. More broadly, my research studies preferences and decision-making through algorithmic and machine learning methods.

I recently completed my PhD in Computer Science at Cornell University, where I was fortunate to be advised by Jon Kleinberg. My dissertation was on human decision-making at the individual and collective level. During my PhD, I interned at Microsoft Research with Jennifer Neville on recommendations in networks and at Microsoft’s Office of Applied Research with Longqi Yang and Mengting Wan on multi-organization recommendation. In Winter and Spring 2023, I was a visiting instructor at Carleton College teaching Data Structures and Mathematics of Computer Science.

When away from my desk, I spend my time playing guitar, building 8-bit computers, playing video games, biking, listening to music, flying quadcopters, bouldering, and playing pool. I have additional interests in spaceflight, Premier League football, and Formula 1.

Recent news

🗣 Feb ‘25 Gave a talk on our replicator dynamics model of candidate positioning at AAAI ‘25 in Philadelphia, PA.

📝 Jan ‘25 Our paper on Plackett-Luce with consideration was accepted to AISTATS ‘25!

🗣 Jan ‘25 Gave a talk on instant runoff voting at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Seattle, WA.

📝 Dec ‘24 Our paper on replicator dynamics for candidate positioning was accepted to AAAI ‘25!

🇨🇦 Dec ‘24 Attended NeurIPS ‘24 in Vancouver.

All news

Collaboration Network

People are red, papers are blue.

Recent Papers

(2025). When the Universe is Too Big: Bounding Consideration Probabilities for Plackett-Luce Rankings. AISTATS.

PDF Cite Poster

(2025). Replicating Electoral Success. AAAI.

PDF Cite Code Poster Slides Video

(2025). Exclusion Zones of Instant Runoff Voting. arXiv.

PDF Cite Code