All Too Human

I'm Michael, a Data Scientist at Rakuten Mobile, Japan.

I am an Artificial Intelligence researcher with a background in Engineering Mathematics (Ph.D) and Computer Science (B.Sc). In May, 2022 I came to Japan as a JSPS Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Tokyo.

I'm interested in Collective Intelligence (both artificial and biological), with research publications in the areas of Artificial Life, Swarm Robotics and Multi-Agent Systems.

Writings

• 01 Feb, 2026 Artefact Thinking

  Some thoughts about what you leave behind, and why it should matter to you

• 28 Apr, 2025 Thoughts of a Fellow

  Despite being an unparalleled opportunity for early-career researchers, the JSPS postdoctoral fellowship programme has significant structural issues that hinder fellows' long-term prospects in Japan.

Projects

• 01 Nov, 2022 The Impact of Network Connectivity on Collective Learning: Less is Sometimes More

  Somewhat counterintuitively, less communication is better in collective systems.

• 02 Jun, 2021 From Best-of-n to Ranking n: A New Approach to Collective Decision-Making in Robot Swarms

  I proposed a novel belief representation for more efficient communication and more accurate learning in the best-of-n problem.

• 14 Sep, 2017 Robust distributed decision-making in swarm robotics

  During my PhD, I developed novel bio-inspired algorithms for decision-making in robot swarms.