Research Interests

• Cognitive Science: I have used classical and parameterized complexity results to diagnose the sources of intractability in various theories of cognitive abilities such as analogy derivation, Bayesian-based reasoning, problem solving, and decision making; these sources are then used as a guide to revisions of those theories. I have co-authored the following publications in this area:
  • Adolfi, F., Vilas, M., and Wareham, T. (2025) "The Computational Complexity of Circuit Discovery for Inner Interpretability." In the Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2025). Selected for Spotlight presentation because the contribution has been judged to be especially notable.
  • Adolfi, F., Vilas, M., and Wareham, T. (2024) ``Complexity-Theoretic Limits on the Promises of Artificial Neural Network Reverse-Engineering.'' In the Proceedings of the 46th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2024).
  • Adolfi, F., Vilas, M., and Wareham, T. (2024) "The Computational Complexity of Circuit Discovery for Inner Interpretability." arXiv.2410.08025 (71 pages). [PDF]
  • van Rooij, I., Devezer, B., Skewes, J.C, Varma, S., and Wareham, T. (2024) "Special Issue Introduction -- What Makes A Good Theory? Interdisciplinary Perspectives." Computational Brain & Behavior, 7(4), 503-507.
  • Adolfi, F., Wareham, T., and van Rooij, I. (2023) "A Computational Complexity Perspective on Segmentation as a Cognitive Subcomputation." Topics in Cognitive Science, 15(2), 255-273.
  • Adolfi, F., Wareham, T., and van Rooij, I. (2022) "Computational Complexity of Segmentation." In the Proceedings of the 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2022).
  • Adolfi, F., Wareham, T., and van Rooij, I. (2022) "Computational Complexity of Segmentation." CoRR abs/2201.13106 (8 pages). [PDF]
  • Rich, P., Blokpoel, M., de Haan, R., Otworowska, M., Sweers, M., Wareham, T., and van Rooij, I. (2021) "Naturalism, Tractability and the Adaptive Toolbox", Synthese, 198(6), 5749-5784.
  • Rich, P., de Haan, R., Wareham, T., and van Rooij, I. (2021) "How hard is Cognitive Science?" In the Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2021). 3034-3040.
  • Woensdregt, M., Spike, M., de Haan, R., Wareham, T., van Rooij, I., and Blokpoel, M. (2021) "Why is scaling up models of language evolution hard?" In the Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2021). 209-215.

• Robotics: I have used classical and parameterized complexity results to diagnose the sources of intractability in various problems associated with the design of groups of one or more reactive robots. I have co-authored the following publications in this area:
  • Wareham, T., de Haan, R., Vardy, A., and van Rooij, I. (2023) "Swarm Control for Distributed Construction: A Computational Complexity Perspective." ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction, 12(1), 6:1-6:45.
  • Wareham, T. (2022) "Creating Teams of Simple Agents for Specified Tasks: A Computational Complexity Perspective." CoRR abs/2205.02061 (20 pages). [PDF]
  • Wareham, T. and Vardy, A. (2022) "Environmental Sensing Options for Robot Teams: A Computational Complexity Perspective." CoRR abs/2205.05034 (77 pages). [PDF]
  • Wareham, T. and Vardy, A. (2021) "The Computational Complexity of Designing Scalar-field Sensing Robot Teams and Environments for Distributed Construction (Extended Abstract)." In the Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Self-Organised Construction (SOCO 2021). 2021 IEEE International Conference on Autonomic Computing and Self-Organizing Systems Companion (ACSOS-C). IEEE Computer Society; Los Alamitos, CA. 232-237.

• Software Engineering: I have used classical and parameterized complexity results to diagnose the sources of intractability in various problems associated with the design, reconfiguration, and (re)modularization of software systems. I have co-authored the following publications in this area:
  • Wareham, T. and de Haan, R. (2022) "Viable Algorithmic Options for Creating and Adapting Emergent Software Systems.'' CoRR abs/2205.06097 (76 pages) [PDF]
  • Wareham, T. and Sweers, M. (2022) "Exploring Viable Algorithmic Options for Automatically Creating and Reconfiguring Component-based Software Systems: A Computational Complexity Approach (Full Version)." CoRR abs/2205.05001 (38 pages). [PDF]

• Machine Learning: I have used classical and parameterized complexity to assess the computational difficulty of Learning from Demonstration (LfD). I have co-authored the following publications in this area:
  • Wareham, T. (2022) "Exploring Viable Algorithmic Options for Learning from Demonstration (LfD): A Parameterized Complexity Approach." CoRR abs/2205.04989 (38 pages). [PDF]