Current Students
Alumni
- Massimiliano Tamborski, Masters student, UoE, 2025.
- Alper Demir, Post-doc, UoE, 2025.
Other Recent Student Collaborators
- Kale-ab Tessera, UoE.
- Elle Miller, UoE.
- Bálint Gyevnár, UoE.
- Riccardo Zamboni, Politecnico di Milano.
- Raul Steleac, UoE.
- Trevor McInroe, UoE.
- Nishanth Anand, Mila.
- Yue Guo, CMU.
- Hyunin Lee, UC Berkeley.
- Jee Won Park, Brown.
- Andi Peng, MIT, now at Anthropic.
- Nate Rahn, Mila.
Prospective Students
In the next few years I will be looking to recruit one PhD student at the University of Edinburgh to work on the foundations of agency: stay tuned! More information about the program and funding sources is available here, as well as two relevant CDTs in ML Systems and Robotics. Please note that sadly I cannot respond to all emails inquiring about working with me (though I will do my best). When I am actively recruiting, I will update this page (last updated: November 2025).
Letters of Recommendation
If you would like me to write a letter of recommendation for you, please provide me with the following:- Advance notice: Please ask me for a letter at least one month before the first deadline you would like me to meet (in exceptional cases, I may be able to write a letter on short notice).
- An up to date CV.
- A reminder one week before the deadline (if I have not confirmed that I've already submitted the letter).
Resources for Students
1. On The Research Process
Books
- On Definitions: Proofs and Refutations by Lakatos.
- You and Your Research by Hamming.
- How To Choose a Good Scientific Problem by Alon.
- How to Read a Paper by Keshav.
- Writing a Technical Paper by Tellex.
- Writing Proofs: Proof and the Art of Mathematics by Hamkins.
- Editorial comments by Littman.
- 10 rules for presentations by Naegle.
- Presentation Advice by Freuder.
Books
- Finite and Infinite Games by Carse
- Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Hofstadter
- The Evolution of Agency by Tomasello.
- The Origin of Concepts by Carey
- The Myth of the Objective by Stanley and Lehman.
- Games: Agency as Art by Nguyen.
- The Scientist in the Crib by Gopnik, Meltzoff, and Kuhl.
- The Intentional Stance by Dennett.
- The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn.
- What the Tortoise Said to Achilles by Carroll
- More is Different by Anderson
- What is an Agent? by Harutyunyan
- A Theory of the Learnable by Valiant
- Two Dogmas of Empiricism by Quine.
- A Mathematical Theory of Communication by Shannon
- The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by LeGuin
- The Last Question by Asimov.