I work at Armadin, where I help build agentic swarms for cybersecurity, and the measurement science of figuring out what they can actually do.
I recently graduated from Stanford, where I studied math and ancient history.
Research
I want to uncover the general principles behind scaling large AI systems: what capabilities emerge, and how we can keep these systems secure and robust.
I like working on concrete problems, such as backdoor detection, isolation, and containment, as well as fuzzier ones: what are the learning dynamics of these systems, and what happens once they outgrow our ability to check them?
I worked on Archon (ICML 2025), a framework for test-time compute, in Chris Ré’s HazyResearch, and did research on robotics in Dorsa Sadigh’s ILIAD lab.
History
I often think about “What Have The Romans Ever Done For Us?”, usually through the lens of social and economic history, and about the limits of institutions more broadly. Recently, I have been thinking about:
- What informal networks let strangers from opposite ends of the ancient world collaborate at scale (e.g. collegia)?
- What are the limits of rigid institutions, and how do they adapt (e.g. bishops taking over the civic roles of magistrates)?
- How do social orders build trust without verification (e.g. Mediterranean trading communities)?
- Why did Rome never industrialize, and why did it underperform at innovation? Why didn’t their patronage networks cultivate more “scientists” in the provinces?
I wrote an essay on how collegia, Rome’s voluntary associations, quietly “Romanized” the empire, and provided the structural scaffolding for the early Christian church.
Personal
I grew up in the cherry capital of Bulgaria. Studying math there built a deep appreciation for simple, intuition-heavy “tricks” for solving problems, a philosophy that still shapes the open questions in AI and science I care about. It’s also where I did some of my first research, on adversarial robustness, back in high school.
In my free time, I love reading books, skiing, and playing tennis.
Best way to reach me: htodorov [at] stanford [dot] edu