Photo of Lain Mustafaoglu

hi! I'm Lain

I am a first year CS PhD student at UT Austin. I am currently at CDGC at the Oden Institute, where I have led the ML/RL reading group since Fall 2024.

My research focuses on deep reinforcement learning, including policy optimization algorithms and multi-agent RL, and evolutionary algorithms. I am also interested in RLHF, and RL for robotics.

I’ve wanted to build companies for as long as I can remember. My first incubator was at 15, and in 2022 I founded Medexe, a medical AI startup. Since then, I’ve been looking for the problem I truly want to obsess over.

During undergrad, I worked at the intersection of cybersecurity and machine learning. I completed my MS thesis at UT Austin on Evolutionary Policy Optimization under the supervision of Dr. Keshav Pingali and Dr. Risto Miikkulainen at UT Austin. In Fall 2025, I helped launch and co-teach a new graduate course on ML for Systems Researchers.

I am from Ankara, Turkey. You might also know me as Zelal.

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