Skip to main contentAll experts

DrThommen George Karimpanal

Lecturer, Information Technology (AI)

Faculty of Science Engineering and Built Environment/School of Information Technology

Orcid identifier0000-0001-8918-3314 (opens in a new tab)⁠
  • Lecturer, Information Technology (AI)
    Faculty of Science Engineering and Built Environment/School of Information Technology
  • +61 3 522 73637 (Work)
  • Geelong Waurn Ponds Campus, 75 Pigdons Road, Waurn Ponds, Victoria 3216

BIO

Thommen is a Lecturer (AI) at the School of IT and the Associate Course Suite Director (Bachelor of AI), Deakin University. His academic interests lie in the field of reinforcement learning and approaches to improve its practical feasibility. He focuses on doing this by making use of human guidance in various forms, along with other approaches to improve the agent's context-awareness. He is officially affiliated with the Machine Intelligence Lab and the Australian Responsible Autonomous Agents Collective (https://araac.au/). He has been a regular program committee member at top AI conferences such as ICML, IJCAI, AAAI, ICLR, NeurIPS, RLC etc., and has won multiple awards for the quality of his reviewing. He currently also serves as area chair for NeurIPS and Senior Program Committee Member for AAMAS.

.

DEAKIN UNIVERSITY CURRENT APPOINTMENT

  • Lecturer, Information Technology (AI)
    Deakin University, School of Information Technology

MEDIA

Showing all associated media thumbnails.

ACADEMIC POSITIONS

  • Associate Course Suite Director, Bachelor of AI
    Deakin University, Geelong, Australia4 Feb 2025 - present
  • Lecturer
    Deakin University, School of IT, Geelong, AustraliaJan 2024 - present
  • Postdoctoral Research Fellow
    Deakin University, A2I2, Geelong, AustraliaApr 2019 - Jan 2024
  • Visiting Researcher
    University of Alberta, Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence Lab, Edmonton, CanadaJan 2017 - Jul 2017
  • Research Intern
    Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, Singapore, SingaporeMay 2013 - Jul 2013

NON-ACADEMIC POSITIONS

  • Assistant Manager
    Tata Motors, Tool Engineering, IndiaAug 2010 - Apr 2012

DEGREES

  • Ph.D., Reinforcement Learning
    Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore, SingaporeJan 2014 - Jan 2019
  • M.Sc., Mechatronics
    National University of Singapore, Singapore, SingaporeAug 2012 - Dec 2013
  • B.Tech., Mechanical Engineering
    Dr. B. R. Ambedkar National Institute of Technology Jalandhar, Jalandhar, IndiaAug 2006 - May 2010

CERTIFICATIONS

  • Graduate Certificate of Higher Education Learning and Teaching
    Deakin University, Geelong, Australia15 Feb 2024 - 9 Feb 2026
  • Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)
    Deakin University28 Apr 2026 - present

FIELDS OF RESEARCH

  • Artificial intelligence
  • Machine learning
  • Reinforcement learning

AVAILABILITY FOR SUPERVISION

  • Masters by Research and PhD supervision

AREA/FACULTY

  • Faculty of Science Engineering and Built Environment

DEPARTMENT/SCHOOL/INSTITUTE/DISCIPLINE

  • School of Information Technology

AREAS OF EXPERTISE