Kaya Stechly

PhD student, Computer Science, Yale University

Joined

September 2023

Names

Kaya Stechly (Preferred)

Emails

****@gmail.com (Confirmed)

****@asu.edu (Confirmed)

****@yale.edu (Confirmed)

Personal Links

Homepage

Google Scholar

Career & Education History

PhD student

Computer Science , Yale University (yale.edu)

2025 – Present

Advisors, Relations & Conflicts

PhD Advisor

R. Thomas McCoy

Present

PhD Advisor

Alexander K. Lew

Present

Coworker

Joshua B. Tenenbaum

Present

Coauthor

Karthik Valmeekam

2024 – Present

Expertise

Planning

Present

Reasoning

Present

Large Language Models

2023 – Present

Publications

Beyond Semantics: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Reasonless Intermediate Tokens
Karthik Valmeekam, Vardhan Palod, Kaya Stechly, Atharva Gundawar, Subbarao Kambhampati
- Accepted by TMLR
- Readers: Everyone
RL in Name Only? Analyzing the Structural Assumptions in RL post-training for LLMs
Soumya Rani Samineni, Durgesh Kalwar, Karthik Valmeekam, Kaya Stechly, Subbarao Kambhampati
- Submitted to ICLR 2026
- Readers: Everyone
Performative Thinking? The Brittle Correlation Between CoT Length and Problem Complexity
Vardhan Palod, Karthik Valmeekam, Kaya Stechly, Subbarao Kambhampati
- NeurIPS 2025 ER Workshop
- Readers: Everyone
Beyond Semantics: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Reasonless Intermediate Tokens
Kaya Stechly, Karthik Valmeekam, Vardhan Palod, Atharva Gundawar, Subbarao Kambhampati
- LAW
- Readers: Everyone
Beyond Semantics: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Reasonless Intermediate Tokens
Kaya Stechly, Karthik Valmeekam, Vardhan Palod, Atharva Gundawar, Subbarao Kambhampati
- FoRLM 2025
- Readers: Everyone
RL in Name Only? Analyzing the Structural Assumptions in RL post-training for LLMs
Soumya Rani Samineni, Durgesh Kalwar, Karthik Valmeekam, Kaya Stechly, Subbarao Kambhampati
- FoRLM 2025
- Readers: Everyone
RL in Name Only? Analyzing the Structural Assumptions in RL post-training for LLMs
Soumya Rani Samineni, Durgesh Kalwar, Karthik Valmeekam, Kaya Stechly, Subbarao Kambhampati
- LAW
- Readers: Everyone
Stop Anthropomorphizing Intermediate Tokens as Reasoning/Thinking Traces!
Subbarao Kambhampati, Kaya Stechly, Karthik Valmeekam, Lucas Paul Saldyt, Siddhant Bhambri, Vardhan Palod, Atharva Gundawar, Soumya Rani Samineni, Durgesh Kalwar, Upasana Biswas
- CogInterp @ NeurIPS 2025 Poster
- Readers: Everyone
Stop Anthropomorphizing Intermediate Tokens as Reasoning/Thinking Traces!
Subbarao Kambhampati, Kaya Stechly, Karthik Valmeekam, Lucas Paul Saldyt, Siddhant Bhambri, Vardhan Palod, Atharva Gundawar, Soumya Rani Samineni, Durgesh Kalwar, Upasana Biswas
- LAW
- Readers: Everyone
A Systematic Evaluation of the Planning and Scheduling Abilities of the Reasoning Model o1
Karthik Valmeekam, Kaya Stechly, Atharva Gundawar, Subbarao Kambhampati
- Accepted by TMLR
- Readers: Everyone

View all 17 publications

Kaya Stechly

Names

Emails

Personal Links

Career & Education History

Advisors, Relations & Conflicts

Expertise

Publications

Co-Authors