Profile

I’ve long been fascinated by the seemingly unique cognitive abilities that humans possess. My choice to study maths and computer science as an undergraduate was directly motivated by this interest, and I dedicated much of my time throughout the course to exploring the links between cognition and computation. Since then, I’ve worked as a software developer at a digital consultancy, pursued a second master’s degree in interdisciplinary research skills, and generally spent a great deal of time thinking about thinking (about thinking, etc…)

I’m eager to pursue a career in academia, and I’m glad to be taking my first steps towards that goal through my PhD.

Research Interests

My interests cross the boundaries of cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, and science and technology ethics. I’m also a big believer in the value of working across the boundaries of traditional disciplines, and I greatly support communication of scientific progress to non-experts.

My PhD project involves computational modelling of learning in relation to both natural and artificial agents. My project will explore how well humans and algorithms learn and generalise from different pieces information depending on how that information is presented. I am particularly intrigued by the facility for generalisation of learning that humans and other animals possess, but which current machine learning algorithms fail to achieve. My project will seek to better understand this phenomenon and the ways in which it might influence both the design of educational curricula for human learners, and the development of more robust machine learning algorithms.