Six questions to Kevin Alcedo

The ELLIS website was very helpful in organizing and preparing all my application materials. Moreover, ELLIS hosted a Q&A session with current students, which cleared up a lot of questions I had. The students were really open to chatting after the session too, and sharing their own experiences, which gave me a lot of confidence in both applying and eventually accepting. At the time (2023, not sure if it's changed since), I had the chance to interview with a few faculty members whose research aligned closely with my application. I ended up choosing two advisors who not only had the strongest overlap with my interests, but also matched well with the specific kind of work I already knew I wanted to do.

My supervisors are Professor Pedro U. Lima (IST Lisboa) and Dr. Rachid Alami (CNRS-LAAS Toulouse), and my work centers on developing Neuro-Symbolic World Models as a core primitive in cognitive architectures, with the goal of endowing robots with an algorithmic theory-of-mind to improve Human-Robot Interaction and Teaming. I'm interested on systems-level integration of connectionist and symbolic models, deployed on embodied intelligent agents capable of lifelong learning, reasoning, planning, and executing complex real-world tasks. 

It certainly gives me different perspectives! The diversity in technical specializations, geographic locations, and research environments—university vs. national center—gives me a unique perspective on the work I’m doing. It’s not just about the research itself, but also about understanding different approaches, potential applications, and even what career paths might look like after the PhD.

Coming from several years in industry and already having a clear idea of the research I wanted to pursue, I was very intentional about choosing an academic environment that aligned with my goals. What really drew me to Técnico was the strength of its research output (both past and present) and the impressive career trajectories of its alumni. Where Técnico really shines, in my experience, is that if you’re proactive, strategic, and clear about your research goals, there’s strong support, flexibility, and people are genuinely receptive when you take initiative. That kind of environment felt like a great fit for me. And of course, the beautiful weather in Lisbon definitely didn’t hurt.

Although I haven’t tapped into everything the ELLIS network has to offer just yet, I’ve definitely started to build connections; especially through the ELLIS Symposiums. They’ve been a great space to not only showcase my research but also meet other students and faculty working on similar topics. The local and global ELLIS communications teams (whether through email updates or LinkedIn) have also made it really easy to stay in the loop with research highlights, events, and opportunities relevant to my work. It’s made the whole academic experience feel a lot more transparent and accessible, rather than opaque or hard to navigate.

I would definitely encourage others to apply to the ELLIS PhD Program. It’s a great fit if your research interests align with those of the various ELLIS Units, and you’re looking for a cross-institutional, geographically distributed, and interdisciplinary research experience.