ShockLab

PhD Students

Current PhD Students

Yasser Salah Eddine Bouchareb

Yasser Salah Eddine Bouchareb is a data scientist and a first-year Ph.D. student at INRS. His research explores the entanglement of deep learning and computer vision. His current work examines the applicability of employing machine-learning-based analysis to distinguish defect areas...

Read More

St John Grimbly

St John is interested in areas related to general intelligence and emerging technologies. His honours work focused on model-based and causal reinforcement learning. His masters research is directed towards multi-agent reinforcement learning from the perspective of causally reasoning agents.

Read More

Rayhaan Perin

My name is Rayhaan Perin and I’m currently doing my MsC at UCT in applied nuclear physics focussing on Time-Of-Flight(TOF) PEPT. I am currently involved in the creation of a Monte-Carlo algorithm that describes a PET detector that will incorporate...

Read More

Mashudu Mokhithi

My research interests are in Mathematics Education in general. For my MSc project, I looked at how mindsets (student’s beliefs about their own intelligence) affect their academic performance in first-year math courses. Going forward, I would like to do research...

Read More

Evgenii Rudakov

Evgenii works at the High-Performance Cognition group at the University of Helsinki. His background is in computer science with a focus on machine learning applications for biosignal analysis. Evgenii studies physiological signal processing and computational modeling of human behavior toward...

Read More

Claude Formanek

Claude studied deep reinforcement learning and graph neural networks in his honours year and is now working on multi-agent RL.

Read More

Asad Jeewa

Asad Jeewa is a lecturer in the department of Computer Science at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. His research lies at the intersection of multi-agent and multi-objective reinforcement learning where he is investigating how self-interested agents can maintain both personal and...

Read More

Alyssa Amod

Alyssa's broad research interests focus on interdiscplinary research using neuroscientific knowledge to advance artificially intelligent systems. For her Master's work she looked at the effect of stress on human spatial navigation performance. Having spent a few years working with the...

Read More

GRADUATED PHD Students

Ruach Slayen

Ruach is working on several projects dealing with the behavior of low-dimensional quantum systems in the presence of magnetic fields - from the quantum mechanics of Fullerenes to duality and bosonization in quantum field theory. He is also working part...

Read More

Justine Tarrant

Justine Tarrant currently works at the School of Physics, University of the Witwatersrand. Justine does research in Cosmology, Mathematical Physics and Theoretical Physics.

Read More

Emma Platts

Emma's research focuses on fast radio bursts (FRBs) -- astrophysical transients -- and using various analysis techniques to explore the origin of the bursts, as well as the Universe around them. In her recent work, she applied kernel density estimation...

Read More

Anthony Sayster

Anthony is researching in the field of mathematics education, particularly focusing on the use of productive struggle in high school mathematics.

Read More

Masters Students

Current Masters Students

Vuyiswa Kubalasa

I'm currently doing my Masters in Applied Mathematics and my research is focused on the application of reinforcement learning to epidemic control problems.

Read More

Tswelopele Moshe

Tswelopele Moshe is a cyber security consultant with a particular interest in formal approaches to cyber security. His M.Sc. studies are on privacy guarantees for deployed machine learning models with a focus on appropriate classes of adversary models against these....

Read More
Sian Gleeson

Sian Heesom-Green

Sian is currently pursuing a master's degree in Computer Science. Her research utilises evolutionary robotics and reinforcement learning to investigate the impact of changing environments and brain-size energy costs on neural complexity evolution. She explores the importance of neural network...

Read More

Ruan de Kock

Ruan learnt about reinforcement learning during his honours year. He was introduced to multi-agent RL during his research for a project and was instantly captivated by the subfield. He is interested in studying multi-agent RL and its wide range of...

Read More
Collins

Collins Maripane

I'm an aspiring data scientist with a solid foundation in astrophysics and data science. Currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Astrophysics at the University of Cape Town, my thesis focuses on emulating HI maps using diffusion models. On my academic...

Read More

Benjamin Sturgeon

Benjamin is passionate about solving the alignment problem, and strongly believes that language models, and reinforcement learning agents will be critical in ensuring that powerful AI systems behave in the ways we want them to. His research is focused on...

Read More

Batsi Ziki

I’m currently doing my honours in Applied Mathematics and I’m writing my thesis on multi-agent reinforcement learning.

Read More
Antonia Grindrod

Antonia Grindrod

I'm currently working on my master’s thesis, which focuses on applying reinforcement learning (RL) to energy management in a South African context. This field of research can involve using RL to optimise energy generation, distribution, storage, and consumption to maximise...

Read More

Graduated Masters Students

Zach Wolpe

Zach is a Machine Learning Engineer currently focused on biotech, working as a Data Scientist at Medibio[https://medibio.com.au/], building ML pipelines to help better understand psychiatric conditions. He is still actively involved in cognitive science research at the HiPerCog group (working...

Read More

Vladimir Makic

Connect Vladimir Makic Vladimir’s thesis was on modelling population dynamics between rhinos and poachers in South Africa as a whole and Kruger National Park in particular. Co-supervised by Dr Henri Laurie.

Read More

Tslil Clingman

Tslil worked for his Honours and Masters on both category theory and Information Geometry.

Read More

Tom Makkink

Tom is currently working on exploring Transformers as memory systems in Reinforcement Learning. He has also conducted research in medical imaging, such as diagnosing malaria in microscopic blood slides using convolutional neural networks.

Read More

St John Grimbly

St John is interested in areas related to general intelligence and emerging technologies. His honours work focused on model-based and causal reinforcement learning. His masters research is directed towards multi-agent reinforcement learning from the perspective of causally reasoning agents.

Read More

Siphelele Danisa

Siphelele did an investigation into the balance between exploration and exploitation for his third year project. His honours research was on scaling and the structure of neural networks, which was an investigation into possible connections between deep learning and the...

Read More

Ruach Slayen

Ruach is working on several projects dealing with the behavior of low-dimensional quantum systems in the presence of magnetic fields - from the quantum mechanics of Fullerenes to duality and bosonization in quantum field theory. He is also working part...

Read More

Rowan Hodson

Rowan is currently studying the intersection of Active Inference agents and Reinforcement Learning

Read More

Roland Dubb

Roland is doing his masters at the university of cape town at the department of mathematics and applied mathematics. For his masters he is looking at addressing the problem of algorithm performance evaluation in the field of cooperative multi-agent reinforcement...

Read More

Rivan Rughubar

Rivan is working on how to implement machine learning algorithms such as support vector machines on quantum computers. He is also interested in mathematical modelling and physics education.

Read More

Rachel Catzel

Rachel is doing her masters in machine learning with a focus on using neural networks to investigate brain aging in HIV-positive individuals. She did her honours in physics with her thesis investigating thermalisation in a gluon plasma.

Read More

Mashudu Mokhithi

My research interests are in Mathematics Education in general. For my MSc project, I looked at how mindsets (student’s beliefs about their own intelligence) affect their academic performance in first-year math courses. Going forward, I would like to do research...

Read More

Lizelle Niit

Lizelle is interested in computational psychiatry and the ways machine learning and Bayesian inference might help us understand and treat mental illness better. Her masters is on the use of reinforcement learning to model decision-making in mental illness. She also...

Read More

Jeremy Du Plessis

Jeremy’s research interests lie in the area of machine learning in general, and reinforcement learning (RL) in particular, especially as a framework for better understanding human reasoning and behaviour.

Read More

Jean du Plessis

Born and raised in Stellenbosch, South Africa, Jean du Plessis pursued his undergraduate studies at Stellenbosch University, majoring in theoretical physics and abstract math. During his undergraduate years, Jean delved into Quantum Field Theory, developed a new concept of network...

Read More

Dean Rance

Dean aims to investigate how anatomical homologues of mammalian Social Behaviour Network found in the zebrafish (Danio rerio) brain may regulate social interactions. To do so, he will measure GCaMP fluorescence as a marker of neural activity in zebrafish brains...

Read More

Daniel Taylor

Daniel's research has focused on explainable AI (XAI) methods using saliency mapping, with practical applications in Brain Age Regression. His MSc dissertation was an expansion of his honours project, creating saliency maps for brain age predictions. He has also spent...

Read More

Arinze Lawrence Folarin

Arinze Lawrence Folarin is my name. I was born in Nigeria. I studied Mathematics at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria for my undergraduate degree (First class honours). I went on to get my master's degree in Mathematical Sciences (Distinction)...

Read More

Alexes Mes

Connect LinkedIn GitHub Website Alexes Mes Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi volutpat justo sed efficitur cursus. Mauris fringilla quam vitae lacinia viverra. Mauris eros dolor, pellentesque sed luctus dapibus, lobortis a orci. Cras pulvinar lorem elit,...

Read More

Alex Antrobus

Connect LinkedIn GitHub Website Alex Antrobus Co-supervised by Prof Jeff Murugan. Publication 1 Publication 2

Read More

Alastair Grant-Stuart

Connect LinkedIn GitHub Website Alastair Grant-Stuart Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi volutpat justo sed efficitur cursus. Mauris fringilla quam vitae lacinia viverra. Mauris eros dolor, pellentesque sed luctus dapibus, lobortis a orci. Cras pulvinar lorem elit,...

Read More

Abram Schönfeldt

Bram wishes he could understand complex systems such as artificial and biological neural networks. This lead to a project that reviewed interpretable reinforcement learning methods during his Honour's year, and now to Master's that uses ideas from the renormalisation group...

Read More

Honours Students

cURRENT hONOURS sTUDENTS

Nick Bossi

I am interested in analysis, probability theory and generative machine learning algorithms. In my honours project I will be using deep-learning...

Read More
Jack Montgomery

Jack Montgomery

I completed my Mathematics, Mathematical Statistics and Computer Science. I have always wanted to use these subjects to understand real life...

Read More

Graduated hONOURS sTUDENTS

Tslil Clingman

Tslil worked for his Honours and Masters on both category theory and Information Geometry.

Read More

St John Grimbly

St John is interested in areas related to general intelligence and emerging technologies. His honours work focused on model-based and causal reinforcement learning. His masters research is directed towards multi-agent reinforcement learning from the perspective of causally reasoning agents.

Read More

Siphelele Danisa

Siphelele did an investigation into the balance between exploration and exploitation for his third year project. His honours research was on scaling and the structure of neural networks, which was an investigation into possible connections between deep learning and the...

Read More

Sabina Stefan

I am a computational biologist and postdoctoral fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, specializing in the application of machine learning techniques and genomic technologies for multidisciplinary research. My current research focus is on developing predictive models for treatment outcomes and...

Read More

Ruan de Kock

Ruan learnt about reinforcement learning during his honours year. He was introduced to multi-agent RL during his research for a project and was instantly captivated by the subfield. He is interested in studying multi-agent RL and its wide range of...

Read More

Rowan Hodson

Rowan is currently studying the intersection of Active Inference agents and Reinforcement Learning

Read More

Roland Dubb

Roland is doing his masters at the university of cape town at the department of mathematics and applied mathematics. For his masters he is looking at addressing the problem of algorithm performance evaluation in the field of cooperative multi-agent reinforcement...

Read More

Robert Spencer

Connect LinkedIn GitHub Website Robert Spencer Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi volutpat justo sed efficitur cursus. Mauris fringilla quam vitae lacinia viverra. Mauris eros dolor, pellentesque sed luctus dapibus, lobortis a orci. Cras pulvinar lorem elit,...

Read More

Rahul Mistri

I am an Applied Mathematics Honours student at UCT with a strong background in Computer Science. My current project aims to analyse and extend the Quantum Approximate Optimisation Algorithm to other use cases. My primary focus is on Quantum Computing,...

Read More

Rachel Catzel

Rachel is doing her masters in machine learning with a focus on using neural networks to investigate brain aging in HIV-positive individuals. She did her honours in physics with her thesis investigating thermalisation in a gluon plasma.

Read More

Qiulin Li

I am currently in my last year of my BSc in Applied Mathematics and Quantitative Biology. My interests lie in Mathematical Biology with a particular focus on modelling biological systems. I am currently learning and researching how to predict chronological...

Read More

Noah de Nicola

I am currently studying Pure Mathematics Honours at UCT. I am interested in Reinforcement Learning and Category Theory. If I'm not working on campus, I'm most likely at the skate park!

Read More

Luke Taylor

Connect LinkedIn GitHub Website Luke Taylor Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi volutpat justo sed efficitur cursus. Mauris fringilla quam vitae lacinia viverra. Mauris eros dolor, pellentesque sed luctus dapibus, lobortis a orci. Cras pulvinar lorem elit,...

Read More

Logan Guildenhuys

Connect LinkedIn GitHub Website Logan Guildenhuys Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi volutpat justo sed efficitur cursus. Mauris fringilla quam vitae lacinia viverra. Mauris eros dolor, pellentesque sed luctus dapibus, lobortis a orci. Cras pulvinar lorem elit,...

Read More

Lizelle Niit

Lizelle is interested in computational psychiatry and the ways machine learning and Bayesian inference might help us understand and treat mental illness better. Her masters is on the use of reinforcement learning to model decision-making in mental illness. She also...

Read More

Lehasa Seoe

Honours in Pure Maths Student, interested in Cybersecurity and software development. Outside of academics you can find me in the kitchen!

Read More

Joseph Marcus

Joseph completed his honours in mathematical statistics at the University of Cape Town in 2021, where he studied Reinforcement Learning and its intersection with Transfer Learning. In addition, Joseph’s honours thesis focussed on liveness detection in face biometric authentication.

Read More

Jibran Bodra

Connect LinkedIn GitHub Website Name Here Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi volutpat justo sed efficitur cursus. Mauris fringilla quam vitae lacinia viverra. Mauris eros dolor, pellentesque sed luctus dapibus, lobortis a orci. Cras pulvinar lorem elit,...

Read More

Jeremy Wilkinson

Connect LinkedIn Jeremy Wilkinson Jeremy did his Honours in Physics at the University of Cape Town and came first in his class. He then went on to do his Masters in Physics at the University of Cambridge. On the Application...

Read More

Jeremy Du Plessis

Jeremy’s research interests lie in the area of machine learning in general, and reinforcement learning (RL) in particular, especially as a framework for better understanding human reasoning and behaviour.

Read More

Jason Connie

Connect LinkedIn GitHub Website Jason Connie Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi volutpat justo sed efficitur cursus. Mauris fringilla quam vitae lacinia viverra. Mauris eros dolor, pellentesque sed luctus dapibus, lobortis a orci. Cras pulvinar lorem elit,...

Read More

Emma Platts

Emma's research focuses on fast radio bursts (FRBs) -- astrophysical transients -- and using various analysis techniques to explore the origin of the bursts, as well as the Universe around them. In her recent work, she applied kernel density estimation...

Read More

Edan Toledo

My general interests are in reinforcement learning and natural language processing. Specifically, my interests lie in the application of artificial intelligence in game domains. My honours project focused on the application of policy-gradient reinforcement learning methods in text-based environments.

Read More

Dominic Bauer

Connect LinkedIn GitHub Website Dominic Bauer Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi volutpat justo sed efficitur cursus. Mauris fringilla quam vitae lacinia viverra. Mauris eros dolor, pellentesque sed luctus dapibus, lobortis a orci. Cras pulvinar lorem elit,...

Read More

Dean Rance

Dean aims to investigate how anatomical homologues of mammalian Social Behaviour Network found in the zebrafish (Danio rerio) brain may regulate social interactions. To do so, he will measure GCaMP fluorescence as a marker of neural activity in zebrafish brains...

Read More

Darien Hillebrand

Connect LinkedIn GitHub Website Name Here Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi volutpat justo sed efficitur cursus. Mauris fringilla quam vitae lacinia viverra. Mauris eros dolor, pellentesque sed luctus dapibus, lobortis a orci. Cras pulvinar lorem elit,...

Read More

Daniel Taylor

Daniel's research has focused on explainable AI (XAI) methods using saliency mapping, with practical applications in Brain Age Regression. His MSc dissertation was an expansion of his honours project, creating saliency maps for brain age predictions. He has also spent...

Read More

Claude Formanek

Claude studied deep reinforcement learning and graph neural networks in his honours year and is now working on multi-agent RL.

Read More

Cher Chen

Cher is currently doing her Honours in pure maths at UCT and writing her thesis on causal inference in machine learning.

Read More

Batsi Ziki

I’m currently doing my honours in Applied Mathematics and I’m writing my thesis on multi-agent reinforcement learning.

Read More

Abram Schönfeldt

Bram wishes he could understand complex systems such as artificial and biological neural networks. This lead to a project that reviewed interpretable reinforcement learning methods during his Honour's year, and now to Master's that uses ideas from the renormalisation group...

Read More

Aaron Kovarsky

Aaron did his undergraduate in pure maths and physics and is currently pursuing his honours in pure mathematics. His project focuses on the area of active inference. When not studying mathematics he can be found going over literature about South...

Read More

External and Additional Students

Current Students

No posts found!

GRADUATED Students

Yvetta Lin

Yvetta is currently undertaking MSc Applied Computational Science and Engineering at Imperial College London. For her master dissertation, she concentrates on the topic, ‘Machine Learning Algorithms Based on Dimensionality Reduction for Positron Emission Particle Tracking’. She has put forward two...

Read More

Stephan Maree

I am a third-year student in the University of Cape Town and am currently busy with my BSc in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics. I am interested in Computational Science, High-Performance Computing and Machine Learning. My current project is an...

Read More

Qiulin Li

I am currently in my last year of my BSc in Applied Mathematics and Quantitative Biology. My interests lie in Mathematical Biology with a particular focus on modelling biological systems. I am currently learning and researching how to predict chronological...

Read More

Jiahao Zhang

Jiahao Zhang is very interested in Data Science and Machine Learning. He got his Bachelor’s degree from North China Electric Power University and will get his Master’s degree from Imperial College London. His master’s dissertation is ‘Positron Emission Particle Tracking:...

Read More

Francois Kemp

I am a 3rd year BSc student majoring in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics. As an undergraduate student, it is my job to be interested in many things, including but not limited to analysis, calculus, numerical methods, and machine learning. This...

Read More

Binyi Zou

I am currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Environmental Data Science and Machine Learning at Imperial College London. My undergraduate background is in Applied Mathematics, and I am currently dedicated to completing my dissertation titled “PEPT-Bayesian: Positron Emission Particle Tracking...

Read More