cv

CV of Ilija Lichkovski — ML engineer and researcher, experience in AI safety, reinforcement learning, and applied machine learning.

Basics

Name Ilija Lichkovski
Label Physicist and Machine Learning Researcher
Email ilija dot lichkovski at gmail dot com
Url https://ilijalichkovski.github.io/
Summary Physicist and machine learning researcher based in the Netherlands with 3+ years of experience in technical research & engineering roles and 4+ years of leadership experience in the education sector.

Work

  • 2025.10 - Present
    ML engineer, forward-deployed engineer
    Researchable
    Built an effective AI coach for enterprise performance consulting, handling context-management, agentic grounding with tool use, and long-horizon coaching roadmap management. Other projects involve data science methods for steel processing, algorithm development for kidney transplant survival prediction, and external on-site discovery and/or consultation visits focusing on data infrastructure.
  • 2025.03 - Present
    Research lead, AI safety researcher
    AI Safety Initiative Groningen
    As a researcher, focused on an alternative approach for steering AI models (under review at NeurIPS 2025), and the first benchmark for LLM agent compliance with EU law (first author; under review at AAAI 2026). As research lead, focusing on creating a reliable talent funnel and facilitating research outputs by promoting research projects and matching talented researchers with senior supervisors.
  • 2024.10 - Present
    Machine learning researcher
    Manifold Machines
    Released quality datasets for training medical QA, visual QA and mathematics capabilities that have gathered thousands of downloads; leading a 3-person team in using them to fine-tune the first Macedonian vision language model. Mentoring a student team from a partner organization in building a text-to-SQL interface for the Macedonian State Statistical Office that allows users to query and visualize complex data with natural language queries.
  • 2024.04 - 2024.07
    Undergraduate researcher
    Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials
    Investigated the molecular basis of a rare genetic disease using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy. Designed experiments, applied a novel technique to probe their dynamics, created intuitive visualizations of results. Recommendations on updating the experimental design, procurement and methodology currently being implemented.
  • 2022.04 - 2023.01
    Engineering Intern
    Netherlands Institute for Space Research
    Responsible for characterizing a performance anomaly of an X-ray calibration instrument built for the European Space Agency's (ESA) flagship ATHENA space telescope set to be launched in the 2030s. Designed and performed advanced optical experiments, performed a comprehensive literature review spanning solid-state physics and engineering and developed mathematical models. Identified a novel explanatory mechanism behind the anomaly replacing the previously dominant hypothesis and introduced recommendations to corporate partners which are currently being utilized for redesign.
  • 2021.08 - Present
    Team manager, financial auditor, selector & selections auditor
    UWC Macedonia
    As team manager: coordinated a remote team of 20+ team members across 5 time zones and oversaw key reforms. As financial auditor: distributed north of €2,300,000+ in scholarships, negotiated increased scholarship funding. As selection QA: evaluated 140+ applicants, performed 80+ interviews, audited 250+ candidate evaluations for quality.

Education

  • 2020.01 - 2024.01

    Groningen

    Bachelor of Science
    University of Groningen
    Physics, specialization in Biophysics and Medical Physics

Skills

Software
Python
C
Bash
Git
PyTorch
Linux
HuggingFace
Google Cloud Platform
Excel
biomedical image analysis in 2D/3D
ML engineering
AI agent engineering
reinforcement learning
data science
Science & research
literature review
end-to-end research project management
running compute-heavy experiments
statistical reasoning
scientific writing
accessible communication
adaptable presentation style
Teamwork & leadership
collaboration
intercultural communication with experience in 3 countries
team management across 5+ time zones
conflict resolution
remote work
talent scouting and evaluation