Hi there! I’m Mathias.

I am currently pursuing a PhD in Machine Learning at the University of Oxford as part of the EPSRC CDT in Autonomous Intelligent Machines and Systems and the Department of Computer Science. I am grateful to be supervised by Professor Alessandro Abate.

My research focuses on instruction following and safety in reinforcement learning (RL). That is, I am interested in how RL agents can learn to follow high-level instructions (e.g. natural or formal language commands) while ensuring that they operate safely and effectively in complex environments. This is a crucial aspect of developing autonomous systems that can interact with humans and the world in a reliable manner.

Previously, I have worked on learning decision trees for explainable and effective controller representation. I also have an interest in logic and knowledge representation, and have worked on integrating formal logical knowledge with learning-based reasoning approaches (e.g. knowledge graph embeddings or graph neural networks). For more details, see my publications.

Education

PhD in Machine Learning (AIMS CDT), 2022-2026, University of Oxford
MSc in Computer Science, 2020-2022, University of Oxford
BSc in Informatics, 2016-2020, Technical University of Munich

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