David Abel

Current Students

Ben Sanati

Co-advised with Amos Storkey

Massimiliano Tamborski

Co-advised with Carl Henrik Ek

Alumni

1. Samuel Garcin, PhD Student, UoE, 2026.
   • Thesis: The Simulation Bottleneck of Reinforcement Learning.
   • Co-advised with Chris Lucas.
2. Massimiliano Tamborski, Masters student, UoE, 2025.
   • Thesis: Bounded Agents in Big Worlds: A Memory-Constrained Approach.
3. Alper Demir, Post-doc, UoE, 2025.

Other Recent Student Collaborators

• Kale-ab Tessera, UoE.
• Logan Bhamidipaty, UoE.
• Elle Miller, UoE.
• Bálint Gyevnár, UoE, now at CMU
• Riccardo Zamboni, Politecnico di Milano, now at Huawei.
• Raul Steleac, UoE.
• Trevor McInroe, UoE, now at stealth startup
• Nishanth Anand, Mila.
• Yue Guo, CMU.
• Hyunin Lee, UC Berkeley.
• Jee Won Park, Brown.
• Andi Peng, MIT, now at Humans&.
• Nate Rahn, Mila, now at Anthropic.

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: July 2026).

Letters of Recommendation

• 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