Alejandro Mercado joined our group this October as a President’s PhD Scholar. We caught up with him to learn more about his background and what he enjoys doing outside of research.

Where are you from, and what is your background?

I’m from Buenos Aires, Argentina — the true city that never sleeps! I earned my Licenciatura, a six-year degree equivalent to a combined Bachelor’s and Master’s, in Computer Science from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). At UBA, the program has a strong emphasis on theoretical computer science, mathematics, and logic. My thesis focused on Belief Revision, an area within Knowledge Representation and Reasoning — a branch of Symbolic AI — that deals with updating knowledge bases while maintaining consistency and preserving as much information as possible. Specifically, my work involved defining and formally characterizing a novel type of non-prioritized belief revision operator, extending the existing framework to be more suitable in real-world applications.

What influenced you to do a PhD, and what are your research interests?

As I was completing my Licenciatura, I realized there was still so much more for me to learn in the field. My interests grew particularly around the limitations of modern machine learning methods, especially in terms of safety, explainability, and performance in complex tasks requiring reasoning. One promising approach to address these challenges is integrating machine learning with symbolic AI — the area I’m most familiar with. And this is the core of my current research interest, though in the coming months, I aim to define a more specific focus for my work.

What do you do in your spare time?

Having a good balance between work and social life is key for me. When I’m not at my desk, you can find me hanging out with friends, trying new places — I go crazy for good food — going out dancing, listening to live music, and meeting new people. Or sometimes I just enjoy wandering around the city: even after 24 years, Buenos Aires always made me feel like a tourist.

I also love cycling — if you can cycle in Buenos Aires, you can cycle anywhere — traveling and photography. I’m excited to see what London has in store. I’m sure it won’t disappoint.