Scott M. Jordan

Postdoctor research at the University of Alberta studying reinforcement learning.

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I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta, advised by Professor Martha White. I completed my Ph.D. in 2022 at the University of Massachusetts, where I was advised by Professor Philip Thomas. I primarily research techniques for solving sequential decision-making problems focusing on using Reinforcement Learning techniques. My research interests center around answering the following high-level questions:

  1. What are the necessary properties for scaling reinforcement learning techniques to solve many tasks?
  2. How can we make algorithms reliable and easy to use for non-experts, i.e., how can we make reinforcement learning algorithms work off-the-shelf?
  3. What principles should we, as researchers, follow when designing machine learning experiments? Similarly, how can we improve the quality of experiments in machine learning?

If you are interested in my research or collaborating, please reach out to me via email.

News

Dec 9, 2022 Gave one of the opinion talks at the NeurIPS Deep RL Workshop. [Video]
Nov 1, 2022 Started as a Postdoc at the University of Alberta working with Martha White.
Sep 16, 2022 Defended my dissertation Dissertation titled “Rigorous Experimentation For Reinforcement Learning.”