Spending my summer at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights was an incredible experience. It really pushed me as a researcher and is one of those places where you instantly feel the weight of history (After all, Watson, the AI system that famously won Jeopardy! was created here), and quickly see just how far IBM’s reach is (AI, quantum computing, etc.).
During my 12 weeks there, I contributed to a two-part project focused on improving the SQL generation capabilities of LLM’s using an agentic approach. By the end of the summer this culminated in a lot of learning as well as the demo paper “QueryGym: Step-by-Step Interaction with Relational Databases” (recently accepted into AAAI 2026!! 🎉).
Along the way, I revisited famailier territory (hello planning with LLM’s), dove into learning/implementing several frameworks previously unknown to me (looking at you Pydantic, LangChain, etc.), engaged in a new kind of debugging (solving LLM context window issues, diagnosing SQL generation errors, etc.), and saw how a bunch of things (SQL, OpenAI Gym, etc.) could be brought together into a really unique project.
Guiding me through all this was a very high caliber, creative team at IBM who really took the time to mentor and challenge me. Being around them showed me how researchers at that level break apart and attack problems, ask questions, and move ideas from inception to full implementation. This was not only interesting to be a part of but showed me all the ways I need to grow as a researcher to hopefully one day play at that level.
Research aside, IBM filled the summer with great learning opportunities and fun events. One highlight was a talk by comedy writers experimenting with AI in their creative process. On this panel was Joe Toplyn, a former Late Night with David Letterman writer and creator of Witscript, an AI-powered joke-writing assistant, which was fun. Midway through the summer, IBM also hosted an Intern Appreciation Day, treating us to a dinner cruise around the Statue of Liberty. That was the closest I’ve ever been to it, and the views of the New York City skyline at sunset were something special.
Beyond IBM, I made the most of being in New York. I took time to explore the area and took a number of side trips, including a visit to Rhode Island to see Providence and my personal favorite, Newport. The latter included doing the Cliff Walk, seeing some of the famous mansions in the area, and driving along Ocean Drive (which had some of the most insane pieces of real estate I’ve ever seen).
To cap it all off, I then made the drive home, crossing a few things off my bucket list along the way:
- Visiting Harpers Ferry & New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia
- Trekking through Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky
As always, I can’t believe just how quickly time has gone by but what an action-packed summer it was 😊