Tim Rocktäschel
Also known as Tim Rocktaschel
Tim Rocktäschel studies open-ended learning and recursive self-improvement in artificial intelligence. As of October 2026, he is co-founder and chief scientist of Recursive and a professor of AI at UCL. Before this work, he held leadership roles at Google DeepMind and Meta AI. His academic route includes a UCL doctorate supervised by Sebastian Riedel and postdoctoral reinforcement-learning research at Oxford. At Oxford, he worked at the intersection of deep learning, logic and natural-language processing. His current research focuses on systems that continue to learn and generate new challenges.
- Now at
- Recursive and University College London
- Works
- 118
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026. Citations and h-index are hidden because this OpenAlex record may be incomplete or mix in other authors.
Timeline
-
2012–2017
From computer science to language research
He earned a computer-science diploma at Humboldt University in 2012 and a UCL doctorate supervised by Sebastian Riedel. He received a Microsoft scholarship in 2013 and a Google PhD fellowship in 2017.
-
Oxford, through September 2018
Reinforcement learning and generalization
His postdoctoral research interests included deep learning, reinforcement learning, program induction, logic and natural-language processing. He studied learning reusable abstractions from few examples. He left Oxford on 18 September 2018.
-
Industry research leadership
Industry research leadership
He led reinforcement-learning work at Meta AI in London, then led open-endedness research at Google DeepMind.
-
As of October 2026
Recursive and open-ended research
He co-founded Recursive and is its chief scientist, holds a UCL professorship and participates in the BOLD research lab. His research focuses on open-endedness and recursive self-improvement.
Sources and credits
Photo: ellis.eu; Tim Rocktäschel profile photograph; creator not stated. License: Not stated by source. Source: ellis.eu. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.