Seminar: Reinforcement learning (Dr Nguyen Dang and Dr Phong Le)

Abstract:

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a machine learning paradigm in which an agent learns to make decisions by interacting with an environment to maximise cumulative reward. In recent years, RL has emerged as one of the most exciting and impactful areas of Artificial Intelligence. Its significance was underscored by the 2024 Turing Award awarded to Richard Sutton and Andrew Barto, whose pioneering work established the foundations of the field. Today, RL underpins a wide range of applications, including robotics, games, recommender systems, healthcare, resource management, and even the training of large language models.

In this talk, we will provide an introduction to the basic concepts of reinforcement learning. We will then illustrate how these concepts are realised in practice via a number of example applications.

Speaker bios:

Nguyen Dang is a Lecturer in the School of Computer Science. Her research lies at the intersection of machine learning and optimisation, with a particular focus on automated algorithm design, using machine learning to automate the development of optimisation methods. She was awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship in 2020, and her work has received multiple best paper awards at leading conferences in evolutionary computation and optimisation.

Phong Le is a Reader in the School of Computer Science. His background spans both academia and industry, with expertise in natural language processing and machine learning. He is passionate about translating cutting-edge research into real-world applications, and he maintains a deep curiosity about fundamental scientific mysteries, particularly the emergence of human language.

Part of the AI Seminar Series, hosted by the GRCDI and led by Centre member Dr Kasim Terzić from the School of Computer Science. This in-person series kicks off in October 2025 with a group discussion session, followed by four lectures delivered by colleagues from the School of Computer Science (Dr Kasim Terzić, Dr Ruth Hoffmann and a joint lecture by Dr Nguyen Dang and Dr Phong Le). The series will culminate in December with a further discussion session where participants can reflect on and discuss a question central to research on artificial intelligence: whether intelligence can be computed.