Dr. Ajaz Ahmad Bhat

Dr. Ajaz Ahmad Bhat leads research in cognitive robotics, AI, and brain-inspired computing systems. His work focuses on developing intelligent robots that can learn, reason, and adapt like biological systems.

He is currently an Assistant Professor of Intelligent Robotics at the Faculty of Digital Science, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Brunei, and a visiting researcher at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan. Prior to this posting, he worked as a Senior Research Associate at the University of East Anglia, UK, and then as an Assistant Professor at the University of Twente, Netherlands.

Biography

Ajaz’s research interests lie at the intersection of intelligent robotics, cognitive sciences, and consumer technologies with a special focus on understanding and designing developmental and cumulative learning systems. His research outputs have been published in more than 15 journal articles with some of them in top-tier journals such as Psychological Review and Autonomous Robots. His work on Causal Learning in Robots was covered in top conferences like ICML and by media outlets such as BBC. He has been involved in multiple international research projects such as EU’s FP7 DARWIN and NIH’s WOLVES. Ajaz retains memberships of both IEEE and APS societies in addition to holding a Ph.D. in Cognitive Robotics from the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Italy.

Education

• PhD in Cognitive Robotics & AI
  Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) / University of Genoa, Italy
  Jan 2013 – Dec 2015
  Advisors: Vishwanathan Mohan & Pietro Morasso
  Thesis: Towards a Brain-like MΞMϽRY for Cognitive Robots

• Masters in Computer Applications
  University of Kashmir, India
  Mar 2007 – Jun 2010
  Advisor: Rana Hashmy
  Thesis: Character Recognition in Neural Networks: A Mixed-Methods Approach

• Bachelors in Physical Sciences
  University of Kashmir, India
  Mar 2004 – Feb 2007

Professional Experience

• Assistant Professor
  School of Digital Science, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Brunei
  Jan 2021 – Present
  Research and grant writing on cognitive robotics, control, and AI for agriculture, social services, and industry. Programme Leader for AI and Robotics, Applied AI, and Data Science programmes.

• Adjunct Professor
  Faculty of Psychology, Open University Cyprus, Cyprus
  Aug 2023 – Jan 2024
  Designed and taught master’s course on Cognitive Agents and Reasoning.

• Assistant Professor
  Technology & Data-Analytics Group, University of Twente, Netherlands
  Nov 2020 – Jan 2021

• Staff Scientist
  Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), Japan
  Aug 2020 – Nov 2021
  Research on embodied cognition and compositionality in perception, action, and imagination.

• Senior Research Associate
  School of Psychology, University of East Anglia, UK
  Nov 2016 – Aug 2020
  Lead researcher on NIH-funded WOLVES project on grounded language learning.

• Research Fellow
  RBCS, Italian Institute of Technology, Italy
  Jan 2016 – Jun 2016
  EU-FP7 DARWIN project on robot action control and human-robot collaboration.

• Junior Research Fellow
  S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, India
  Aug 2010 – Jul 2012
  DST-funded project on game-theoretic models of motor and social learning.

Industrial Experience

• Visiting Graduate Student Researcher
  Profactor GmbH, Austria (under EU-FP7 DARWIN)
  2013 – 2015
  Developed and tested AI technologies on Staubli robots for assembly-line manufacturing.

Grants, Achievements & Impact

Major Grants

• Leverhulme UK Funded Grant
  Process Theory of Vocabulary Variability (2025–2029) – £450,000 – Co-PI (International)
• iUNRC PRC Funded Grant
  A Dynamical Systems Reengineering of Attention and Memory in Autism (2025–2027) – ¥420,000 – PI
• UBD FRC Grant
  Whole-Body Task-Driven Synergetic Motor Planning for Stretch Robot (2025–2026) – BND $20,200 – PI
• NIH, US Funded Grant
  The Dynamics of Visual Attention and Word Learning (2016–2022) – £996,614 – Postdoc Researcher

Recognition & Media

• 2020: Special Recognition Award, University of East Anglia, for Pe’nd Online community engagement
• 2020: Work on causal learning featured on BBC’s Science in Action
• 2016: Article on Aesop’s Fable featured as cover of Journal of the Royal Society Interface
• 2012: Article highlighted in Kaleidoscope section of Physical Review E

Fellowships & Awards

• Thesis Completion Fellowship, IIT Genova (2016)
• Doctoral Fellowship, University of Genova (2013–2015)
• EU FP7 DARWIN Project Member (£300k funding)
• UGC Lecturer-ship Eligibility & Research Fellowship (India, 2012)
• DST Senior & Junior Research Fellowships (2010–2012)
• 3rd Best Talk Award, Bose Fest 2012

Teaching & Mentoring

• Courses Taught: Robotics Control, Cognitive Robotics, AI in Robotics, Algorithms & Data Structures, Software Engineering (BSc/MSc)
• Student Supervision: 2 PhDs, 4 Research Masters, 12 Bachelor projects, 20+ interns/mentees

Professional Service

• Founding Member, Pe’nd Online (2020–Present) – Digital networking platform for Kashmiris
• Memberships:
  • Cognitive Science Society (2018–Present)
  • IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Cognitive Robotics (2018–Present)
• Organizing Roles:
  • Pint of Science Festival, Norwich (2018)
  • Workshop on Dynamical Field Theory, CogSci 2018
• Reviewer for: Neural Networks, ICRA, ICLR, IEEE TCDS, PLOS Comp Bio, Cognitive Science, CogSci, ICDL-EPIROB, Living Machines, and more

Selected Publications (2011–2025)

• 2025: MuCoS: Efficient Drug–Target Discovery via Multi-Context-Aware Sampling in Knowledge Graphs. BioNLP@ACL
• 2024: * Muko_KGC Model for Knowledge Graph Completion*. PAKDD 2025
• 2023: Formal Theories Clarify the Complex. Child Development
• 2022: WOLVES: A Neural Process Account of Cross-Situational Word Learning. Psychological Review
• 2020: Causal Learning by a Robot with Semantic-Episodic Memory. ICLR
• 2019: Muscle-less Motor Synergies. Physics of Life Reviews
• 2018: Goal Directed Reasoning in Robots. Cognitive Computation
• 2016: Humanoid Robot Infers Archimedes’ Principle. Journal of the Royal Society Interface
• 2012: Dynamics of Competitive Learning. Physical Review E

Conference Talks & Workshops

Invited/keynote talks at CogSci, ICDL-EPIROB, ICRIET, and more. Frequent presenter at ICIS, SRCD, and IEEE robotics conferences on topics spanning word learning, causal reasoning, motor synergies, and developmental robotics. Notable invited talks include “Thirsty Crows, Cognitive Robots and Attentive Babies” (ICDL-EpiRob 2018) and “Dynamic Field Theory for Higher Cognition” (CogSci 2018).