Associate Professor Pascal Bercher
Highly Commended, Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in HDR Supervision
College of Systems and Society
Synopsis
Associate Professor Bercher is a computer scientist working in automated planning — a subfield of artificial intelligence that studies how to automatically find a sequence of actions to reach a goal. He works on algorithm design and on the theory behind problem solving.
Mentoring is the part of the job he values most. He holds that most students who struggle do so not for lack of ability, but for lack of a mentor who gives them what they need to succeed — the right topic for their skills and interests, and the right support for the problems they face. He builds each student’s research around a target publication venue, so their time goes towards a concrete goal instead of being spent aimlessly.
Since 2019 he has graduated two PhD students and supervised close to forty research projects, ranging from summer internships to Honours and Master’s theses. He currently supervises six PhD students, plus a handful of Honours and research-project students.
His students have won University Medals, published at leading international conferences — several as lead authors while still undergraduates — and earned best student and best undergraduate student paper awards and won multiple tracks at an international competition. From 2023 to 2025 he was one of two coordinators monitoring the progress of more than a hundred PhD students in his School’s artificial intelligence group, running progress reviews, meetings, and retreats. He has also co-organised an international summer school and mentoring forums at major conferences, where he has also served as a mentor.
(Photo by Tangyao Zhang/Teaching Communities and Recognition team).