Dr

Victor-Alexandru

Darvariu

I am currently a Lecturer in Machine Learning for Engineering in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Sheffield. Before joining the School in November 2026, I was a Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the Oxford Robotics Institute, University of Oxford from August 2024. My prior appointment was as a Research Fellow in Machine Learning at the Department of Computer Science, University College London (UCL). My PhD in Computer Science, awarded in May 2023 by UCL, was part of the doctoral programme of The Alan Turing Institute and included a research internship at Spotify. I hold an MSci in Computer Science from the University of Birmingham (2013-2018), which included a year spent as a software engineer in the financial services sector with Morgan Stanley.

My research focuses on artificial intelligence (AI), particularly graph reinforcement learning – the intersection of reinforcement learning, planning, and machine learning on graphs. The central insight behind my work is the potential of reinforcement learning to discover novel and effective strategies for solving complex decision-making and optimisation problems, especially those that can be formulated over graphs (networks). I am motivated by the promise of AI to accelerate discovery and address important challenges in science and engineering through interdisciplinary collaborations with domain experts.  The applications of my work span diverse disciplines including robotics, operations research, and the physical sciences.