Group

Carles Balsells Rodas
PhD student (Computing)

Carles is from Reus, Spain. He graduated with a bachelor in Engineering Physics and Computer Science at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, and a master’s degree in Machine Learning at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. He joined the group in Oct 2021 as a PhD candidate in Computing and a teaching scholar. His research interests are mostly based on machine learning, more specifically causal discovery, representation learning, and sequential data modelling. Apart from doing research, he enjoys studying chess, playing padel, and being around with close friends and family.

Wuhao Chen
PhD student (Computing)

Wuhao obtained a BSc in Computer Science from UCL and MSc in Advanced Computing from Imperial. He joined the group as a Computing PhD candidate in May 2024. Wuhao's research interests include generative models, especially on non-textual data. In his spare time, he enjoys photography, reading, and various sports.

Riccardo El Hassanin
PhD student (Computing, AI4Health CDT, with Oliver Ratmann)

Riccardo graduated with a Master of Engineering in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Imperial College London. He joined the group in January 2026 as a PhD candidate in the AI4Health CDT programme. His research interests lie in probabilistic machine learning for deep sequence modelling and uncertainty-aware inference. Outside of his research, he enjoys travelling, music, cooking and sports.

Zhaodong Guo
MRes student (Computing)

Zhaodong Guo is from Hebei, China. He earned bachelor’s degrees in Internet of Things Engineering from Hebei University of Technology and in Computer Science from Massey University. In September 2025, he began pursuing an MRes at Imperial College London and joined the group. His current research interests include Gaussian processes, state-space models, and probabilistic modeling. Outside of research, he enjoys outdoor exploration and traveling.

Isuru Shavindra Jayasekera
PhD student (Math, StatML CDT)

Shavindra studied his undergraduate and master's in mathematics at the University of Cambridge, specialising in statistics. Following this, he completed a master's in computational statistics and machine learning at UCL. He joined the group in Oct 2023 as a PhD student in the Modern Statistics and Statistical Machine Learning CDT programme. His research interests include techniques to improve explainability, interpretability and reliability of foundational models as well as applications in the field of chemistry. In his spare time, Shavindra enjoys amongst other things going to music concerts, photography, hiking and trying out new sports.

Naoki Kiyohara
PhD student (Computing, with Edward Johns)

Naoki is from Tokyo, Japan. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in Physics at Tokyo University of Science and a master’s degree in Advanced Materials Science at the University of Tokyo. Subsequently, he joined Canon Inc. (Tokyo) and started in Oct 2023 at Imperial College London as a PhD student, sponsored through the company's corporate study abroad program. His research is centered around model-based reinforcement learning, with a particular focus on sequential generative models. Moving forward, he aims to significantly enhance exploration efficiency by utilizing models that can capture uncertainties, such as Bayesian models. In his free time, he enjoys playing and listening to classical piano music.

Yingzhen Li
Faculty

I lead my group's research and do my best to help with other members' great work.

Xixi Liu
WASP postdoctoral fellow

Xixi Liu is currently a postdoctoral research fellow, funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, at the Department of Computing at Imperial College London. Her research focuses on developing reliable foundation models through the lens of out-of-distribution detection, model calibration, and hallucination mitigation. Before joining Imperial, she was part of the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP) as a PhD student. She earned both her PhD and Master’s degrees from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden.She enjoys swimming, visiting museums, photography, hiking, and live music in her spare time.

Xinzhe Luo
Postdoc (EEE, Imperial-X, with Chen Qin)

Xinzhe obtained his PhD degree in Statistics in 2024 and BSc degree in Mathematics in 2019 from Fudan University, respectively. During his PhD study, his research focused on multi-modal groupwise registration of medical images using information theory and deep generative modelling. His research interests include machine learning and Bayesian inference in medical imaging. He is now working on trustworthy AI for MRI reconstruction.

James Myles
PhD student (Computing, with Bernhard Kainz)

James graduated with a BSc from King’s College London in Mathematics with Statistics and an MSc in Artificial Intelligence at Imperial College London. He joined the group in October 2025 as a PhD student. His research interests include multi-modal and generative modelling, information theory, reinforcement learning and quality-diversity optimisation, with a particular emphasis on their theoretical foundations. In his spare time, he enjoys a range of bat-and-ball sports and playing the piano.

Federico Ottomano
Postdoc (Chemistry, AIChemy, with Alex Ganose and Jarvist Frost)

Federico obtained a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Liverpool, where he worked in the domain of AI4Science, specializing in AI-driven materials discovery. His research interests include geometric graph neural networks and deep generative models, with applications in the Chemistry domain. In his free time, he enjoys playing the piano and practicing sport.

Zijing Ou
PhD student (Computing)

Zijing graduated with a B.E. degree from Sun Yat-sen University in Software Engineering and then spent one year interning at Tencent AI lab. He joined the group as a PhD candidate in Computing in Oct 2022. These days he is interested in approximate inference, energy-based models, and interpretable AI. Zijing enjoys playing all kinds of balls in his sparetime, such as basketball, tennis, ping-pong and so on.

Mariya Pavlova
PhD student (Computing, with Elizaveta Semenova)

Mariya joins the group in Aug 2024, her research interest is on machine learning methods for climate science. Previously, Mariya was a Director at Sustainable Fitch (part of Fitch Group) responsible for product development. Prior to that, she spent a number of years at top firms in asset management. She also is a DeepMind scholar, Forbes speaker, ITU (United Nations) member, member of AI 4 Climate Lab at Imperial College London, frequent guest speaker, and a start-up mentor. Mariya is recognised as one of Women of the Future: 50 Rising Stars in ESG.

Lapo Rastrelli
PhD student (Computing)

Lapo obtained an MEng degree in Biomedical Engineering (Computational stream) at Imperial College London. He joined the group previously as an MRes student and now as a PhD student starting Oct 2023.

Jacob Yoke Hong Si
PhD student (Computing)

Jacob earned a Master of Engineering degree specializing in AI and ML from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an Honours Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science, Statistics, and Economics at the University of Toronto. He is also fortunate to have been advised by Prof. Jonathan Kao at UCLA and Prof. Rahul Krishnan at the Vector Institute where he researched novel machine learning architectures through deep generative modeling. Jacob joined the group in Jan 2024. His current research interests include the improvement of generative AI and applying them to various domains including images, sequential modeling and tabular data. During his spare time, he enjoys playing and watching sports such as football, rugby and golf.

Xavier Sumba Toral
PhD student (Computing)

Xavier obtained his MSc at Concordia and McGill University in Canada. Before that, he did his BEng. at the University of Cuenca in Ecuador. He also worked at the University of Cuenca and Heyday (now acquired by Hootsuite). He joined the group as a Ph.D. candidate in Computing in Feb 2023. These days, he is interested in Bayesian models and approximate inference. In his spare time, he loves running and discovering new places.

Zhengrui Xiang
PhD student (Computing)

Zhengrui hails from Sichuan, China. He completed his BSc degree in Information and Computing Science at the Beijing Institute of Technology, followed by an MSc in Statistics at Imperial College London. Later, he earned another MSc in data science and machine Learning from University College London. In April 2024, he joined the group as a PhD candidate. His current research interests lie in a variety kind of generative models, interpretable AI and their applications. Outside of his research, Zhengrui loves to draw digital illustrations, play the piano, play soccer, watch animations, and play video games.