Artificial Intelligence · Reinforcement Learning · Skill Discovery

Welcome to Joshua B. Evans' Homepage

Department of Computer Science, University of Bath

I'm a Lecturer and PhD researcher at the University of Bath, where I work with the Bath Reinforcement Learning Laboratory under the supervision of Professor Özgür Şimşek. This website contains links to my research, teaching, news, and a personal blog. Whatever you came here for, I hope that you find this website useful!

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Research

My research focuses on developing AI agents capable of incrementally learning complex behaviours, or skills, through interaction with their environments. Most of my work is done within the framework of reinforcement learning.

My wider research interests include:

  • Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning
  • Graph-Based Skill Discovery Methods
  • Human-Inspired Skill Discovery Methods
  • World Models and Representation Learning
  • Intrinsically-Motivated Reinforcement Learning

Teaching

I'm the unit convenor for the University's on-campus reinforcement learning units at undergraduate and master's level. I am also the author of the online version of these units for the University's online MSc AI programme.

  • Reinforcement Learning (Undergraduate: CM32032, CM52048)
  • Reinforcement Learning 1 (Postgraduate: CM52074)
  • Reinforcement Learning 2 (Postgraduate: CM52075)

I also supervise BSc, MComp, and MSc dissertation projects. You can see a list of students and projects I have supervised in the past here. If you are a student interested in undertaking a reinforcement learning project, please get in touch!


Featured Paper

Creating Multi-Level Skill Hierarchies in Reinforcement Learning

We propose a graph-based characterisation of a multi-level skill hierarchy for reinforcement learning.

Recent News

Submitted my PhD dissertation titled "Identifying Multi-Level Behaviour Hierarchies Using Modularity Maximisation".

November 2025

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