Nihal Nayak

One-Page Resume | CV (Updated in Feb 2026)

I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University (SEAS) working with David Alvarez-Melis. My research focuses on efficiently building and adapting foundation models through data‑centric solutions.

I completed my Ph.D. in Computer Science at Brown University where I worked with Stephen Bach. During my Ph.D., I studied zero-shot generalization, the ability of an intelligent system to generalize to new classes, tasks, and environments without human annotations. I introduced new learning methods and evaluation techniques for zero-shot generalization through synthetic datasets (Bonito), composition (CSP, CLIP Binding), and structured knowledge (ZSL-KG).

Email : nnayak [at] seas [dot] harvard [dot] edu

news

Feb 15, 2026	New pre-print on understanding the critical components in targeted instruction selection.
Jan 25, 2026	Our paper on boomerang distillation was accepted to ICLR 2026.
Jan 3, 2026	Our paper on understanding easy-to-hard (and hard-to-easy) generalization in LLMs using item response theory was accepted to EACL 2026.

selected publications

ArXiv

A Critical Look at Targeted Instruction Selection: Disentangling What Matters (and What Doesn’t)

Nihal V. Nayak, Paula Rodriguez-Diaz, Neha Hulkund, Sara Beery, and David Alvarez-Melis

ArXiv 2026

Bib PDF Code

@article{nayak:arxiv26,
  title = {A Critical Look at Targeted Instruction Selection: Disentangling What Matters (and What Doesn't)},
  author = {Nayak, Nihal V. and Rodriguez-Diaz, Paula and Hulkund, Neha and Beery, Sara and Alvarez-Melis, David},
  journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.14696},
  year = {2026},
  pdf = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.14696},
  code = {https://github.com/dcml-lab/targeted-instruction-selection},
  abbr = {ArXiv},
  preprint = {true},
  bibtex_show = {true},
  selected = {true}
}

ICLR

Boomerang Distillation Enables Zero-Shot Model Size Interpolation

Sara Kangaslahti, Nihal V. Nayak, Jonathan Geuter, Marco Fumero, Francesco Locatello, and David Alvarez-Melis

In The Fourteenth International Conference on Learning Representations 2026

Bib PDF Code

@inproceedings{kangaslahti:iclr26,
  title = {Boomerang Distillation Enables Zero-Shot Model Size Interpolation},
  author = {Kangaslahti, Sara and Nayak, Nihal V. and Geuter, Jonathan and Fumero, Marco and Locatello, Francesco and Alvarez-Melis, David},
  booktitle = {The Fourteenth International Conference on Learning Representations},
  year = {2026},
  pdf = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.05064},
  code = {https://github.com/dcml-lab/boomerang-distillation},
  abbr = {ICLR},
  preprint = {false},
  bibtex_show = {true},
  selected = {true}
}

Findings

Learning to Generate Instruction Tuning Datasets for Zero-Shot Task Adaptation

Nihal V. Nayak, Yiyang Nan, Avi Trost, and Stephen H. Bach

In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2024 2024

Bib PDF Blog Code Project

@inproceedings{bonito:aclfindings24,
  title = {Learning to Generate Instruction Tuning Datasets for Zero-Shot Task Adaptation},
  author = {Nayak, Nihal V. and Nan, Yiyang and Trost, Avi and Bach, Stephen H.},
  booktitle = {Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2024},
  year = {2024},
  selected = {true},
  preprint = {false},
  bibtex_show = {true},
  abbr = {Findings},
  pdf = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.18334},
  blog = {https://snorkel.ai/how-bonito-helps-fine-tune-specialized-llms-faster-than-ever/},
  code = {https://github.com/BatsResearch/nayak-arxiv24-code},
  project = {https://github.com/BatsResearch/bonito}
}

ICLR

Learning to Compose Soft Prompts for Compositional Zero-Shot Learning

Nihal V. Nayak, Peilin Yu, and Stephen H. Bach

In International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2023

Bib PDF Code

@inproceedings{csp:iclr23,
  author = {Nayak, Nihal V. and Yu, Peilin and Bach, Stephen H.},
  title = {Learning to Compose Soft Prompts for Compositional Zero-Shot Learning},
  booktitle = {International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR)},
  year = {2023},
  abbr = {ICLR},
  bibtex_show = {true},
  selected = {true},
  pdf = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.03574},
  code = {https://github.com/BatsResearch/csp}
}

ICLR

Multitask Prompted Training Enables Zero-Shot Task Generalization

Victor Sanh, Albert Webson, Colin Raffel, Stephen H. Bach, Lintang Sutawika, Zaid Alyafeai, Antoine Chaffin, Arnaud Stiegler, Teven Le Scao, Arun Raja, Manan Dey, M Saiful Bari, Canwen Xu, Urmish Thakker, Shanya Sharma Sharma, Eliza Szczechla, Taewoon Kim, Gunjan Chhablani, Nihal V. Nayak, Debajyoti Datta, Jonathan Chang, Mike Tian-Jian Jiang, Han Wang, Matteo Manica, Sheng Shen, Zheng Xin Yong, Harshit Pandey, Rachel Bawden, Thomas Wang, Trishala Neeraj, Jos Rozen, Abheesht Sharma, Andrea Santilli, Thibault Fevry, Jason Alan Fries, Ryan Teehan, Stella Biderman, Leo Gao, Tali Bers, Thomas Wolf, and Alexander M. Rush

In International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2022

Bib PDF Code Project

@inproceedings{sanh:iclr22,
  author = {Sanh, Victor and Webson, Albert and Raffel, Colin and Bach, Stephen H. and Sutawika, Lintang and Alyafeai, Zaid and Chaffin, Antoine and Stiegler, Arnaud and Scao, Teven Le and Raja, Arun and Dey, Manan and Bari, M Saiful and Xu, Canwen and Thakker, Urmish and Sharma, Shanya Sharma and Szczechla, Eliza and Kim, Taewoon and Chhablani, Gunjan and Nayak, Nihal V. and Datta, Debajyoti and Chang, Jonathan and Jiang, Mike Tian-Jian and Wang, Han and Manica, Matteo and Shen, Sheng and Yong, Zheng Xin and Pandey, Harshit and Bawden, Rachel and Wang, Thomas and Neeraj, Trishala and Rozen, Jos and Sharma, Abheesht and Santilli, Andrea and Fevry, Thibault and Fries, Jason Alan and Teehan, Ryan and Biderman, Stella and Gao, Leo and Bers, Tali and Wolf, Thomas and Rush, Alexander M.},
  title = {Multitask Prompted Training Enables Zero-Shot Task Generalization},
  booktitle = {International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR)},
  year = {2022},
  pdf = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.08207},
  project = {https://github.com/bigscience-workshop/promptsource},
  code = {https://github.com/bigscience-workshop/t-zero},
  abbr = {ICLR},
  bibtex_show = {true},
  selected = {true}
}