I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Maths and Applied Maths at the University of Cape Town, where I direct the UCT AI Initiative. I am also an Adjunct Professor at INRS Montréal.

My work spans theoretical physics, reinforcement learning, and computational neuroscience, with a focus on understanding intelligence as a dynamical and physical process. I am particularly interested in reinforcement learning, multi-agent systems, and theory-driven AI for science. Much of my research explores how mathematical structure — from statistical mechanics to dynamical systems — can inform the design and analysis of learning systems.

I completed my PhD at the University of Southampton in 2005 on applications of string theory to quantum chromodynamics, followed by postdoctoral appointments in Beijing, Santiago de Compostela, and Munich before joining UCT in 2013.

I supervise across mathematics, machine learning, and interdisciplinary AI, and am deeply committed to teaching and building research capacity. Outside academia, I cook, photograph, exercise and read.