Research Interests
I am super passionate about artificial intelligence and, more specifically, reinforcement learning. In particular, I am interested in designing agents capable of acting in a wide variety of environments. My current research focuses on autonomously learning hierarchies of abstractions that can be transferred between tasks. This parallels the way humans are able to transfer abstract concepts from one task to another in the form of symbolic representations.
Work Experience
Senior Lecturer
Lectured COMS1018A: Introduction to Algorithms & Programming, consisting of ±350 students.
Lectured COMS4033A: Artificial Intelligence, consisting of ±60 students.
Lecturer
Lectured COMS1018A: Introduction to Algorithms & Programming, consisting of ±350 students.
Lectured COMS3035A: Advanced Analysis of Algorithms, consisting of ±200 students.
Co-lectured COMS4047A: Special Topics, covering reinforcement learning for an honours-level class of ±45 students.
Associate Lecturer
Lectured COMS1018A: Introduction to Algorithms & Programming, consisting of ±350 students.
Lectured COMS3035A: Advanced Analysis of Algorithms, consisting of ±200 students.
Co-lectured COMS4047A: Special Topics, covering reinforcement learning for an honours-level class of ±45 students.
Sessional Lecturer
Lectured COMS1018: Introduction to Algorithms & Programming, consisting of ±250 students.
Android Developer
Responsible for delivering Android applications related to the insurance industry, and integrating said applications into the existing backend and proprietary hardware systems.
Developer
Part of a small R&D team responsible for rewriting components of an ERP suite, including replacing the existing Telnet connection to the server with SSL, as well as providing a mechanism for session recovery should the connection be lost. Also responsible for rewriting the entire front-end in JavaFX to be used on multiple platforms.
Tutor
Responsible for setting and conducting tutorials and lab sessions, as well as marking test scripts.
Recent Select Publications
Synthesizing Navigation Abstractions for Planning with Portable Manipulation Skills
Conference on Robot Learning
Automatic Encoding and Repair of Reactive High-Level Tasks with Learned Abstract Representations
The International Journal of Robotics Research
Autonomous Learning of Object-Centric Abstractions for High-Level Planning
International Conference on Learning Representations
Generalisation in Lifelong Reinforcement Learning through Logical Composition
International Conference on Learning Representations
Education
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PhD in Computer ScienceUniversity of the Witwatersrand2017 - 2021
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MSc in Computer Science
(with distinction) University of the Witwatersrand2014 - 2016 -
BSc (Hons) in Computer Science
(with distinction) University of the Witwatersrand2013 -
BSc in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics
(with distinction) University of the Witwatersrand2010 - 2012
Awards
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Google PhD Fellowship
Awarded the 2018 Google Africa PhD Fellowship in the field of Machine Learning.
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PVT Educational Bursary
One of two recipients of the PV Tobias Educational Bursary for academically excellent candidates.
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Chancellor's Gold MedalAwarded for the most distinguished graduate of the year.
Language
- English (Native)
- Afrikaans (Passable)
Things I Like
- One true brace style
- Bitstream Charter
- Following the gradient
- Céline Dion
- Slipknot
- The word "argillaceous"
Things I Dislike
- MATLAB
- Incorrect gerund usage
- Not following the gradient
- Squirrels
- Mispronunciation of "Euler"
Skills
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Making meaningless, vague bars
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Sarcasm
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Redundancy
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Tautology
Others
- Artificial Intelligence
- Reinforcement Learning
- Transfer Learning
- Planning
- Java
- Python
- C++11
- PyTorch
- Basic Arithmetic