Project Summary

Funding request for undergraduate travel to present our paper, "Interpreting Code Correctness in Language Models through Activation Steering," at the ICML 2026 DL4C Workshop on July 10th. This work uncovers how LLMs internally represent code correctness and uses activation steering to actively improve code generation without fine-tuning.

What are this project's goals?

How will you achieve them?

Goal 1: Present our accepted mechanistic interpretability research at a tier-1 ML workshop (ICML DL4C).

Goal 2: Gather feedback from top researchers to expand this work into a full conference submission.

Goal 3: Network with international experts to explore collaborative research opportunities and future graduate studies.

Execution: I will travel to the venue, present our poster, engage with attendees during workshop sessions, and participate in peer discussions.

How will this funding be used?

The total requested amount will strictly cover essential, budget-conscious travel expenses:

Flights: Round-trip economy airfare from India to the ICML venue.

Accommodation: 4 nights in a budget hotel or shared student lodging near the convention center.

Registration: ICML student workshop registration fee.Visa Fees: Mandatory visa processing costs for international travel.

Who is on your team?

What's your track record on similar projects?

Aditya Narendra - first author

Co Authors: Shubham Kamble, Subhankar Panda, Pranav Benipuri, Vibha Mishra, and Dr. Chandresh Kumar Maurya.

Track Record: Our team has a strong foundation in core ML. This specific work successfully identified a one-dimensional correctness subspace in LLM residual streams, improving pass@1 rates on MBPP+ by up to 15.6% without heavy retraining.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

Cause 1: Visa processing delays preventing timely physical travel.

Cause 2: Insufficient funding to cover the full trip, forcing a last-minute cancellation.

Outcome: If physical attendance fails, I will present virtually if permitted by the workshop. The primary downside is missing critical in-person networking, peer feedback, and mentorship opportunities that are vital for an undergraduate researcher

How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?Amount: $0.Context: As an undergraduate student team in India, we have received no external funding or corporate grants for this specific project.