Hi ^_^
I’m a PhD student in Computer Science at the University of British Columbia, co-advised by Dr. Kelsey Allen at UBC and Dr. Tom Silver at Princeton University. I’m also affiliated with Princeton Robot Planning and Learning Group (PRPL). Before this, I completed my Master’s in Computer Science at the University of Alberta under the supervision of Dr. Levi Lelis.
I’m interested in understanding how to learn physical strategies from only a few demonstrations and generalize beyond what was observed. Currently, I study how learned abstractions and structured policies can support generalization from limited experience. More broadly, I’m interested in reinforcement learning, world models, and cognitively inspired approaches to learning and reasoning.
You can contact me at zb2882@princeton.edu/zbashir1@student.ubc.ca . <!– I’m currently a Machine Learning Researcher affiliated with the Princeton Robot Planning and Learning Group (PRPL) and the UBC Natural and Artificial Intelligence Lab (NAIL), working with Dr. Tom Silver and Dr. Kelsey Allen. I will begin my PhD in September 2026 under their supervision. Before this, I completed my Master’s in Computer Science at the University of Alberta under the supervision of Dr. Levi Lelis.
Currently, my research focuses on building agents that can learn physical strategies from only a few demonstrations. In particular, I study programmatic policies and learned abstractions that help agents generalize beyond the examples they observe. More broadly, I’m interested in how we can build systems that learn, reason, and understand the world more like humans, using ideas from symbolic reasoning, neurosymbolic AI, reinforcement learning, and imitation learning.
You can contact me at zb2882@princeton.edu –>