Ernesto García Ciganda on Ernesto Garcia

About

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I am a Uruguayan mathematician currently completing a joint PhD between LAAS-CNRS / Université de Toulouse III (France) and PEDECIBA / Universidad de la República (Uruguay), under the supervision of Paola Bermolen and Matthieu Jonckheere.

My doctoral project focuses on reinforcement learning in sparse reward environments, using tools from rare event simulation and stochastic processes.

Education

PhD in Mathematics (in progress)
Cotutelle: LAAS-CNRS / Université de Toulouse III & PEDECIBA / Universidad de la República.
Supervisors: Paola Bermolen and Matthieu Jonckheere. Since February 2023.

Research

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My research lies in applied probability, with a focus on reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms in hard-exploration environments — settings where reward signals are sparse or highly stochastic. I study these problems through the framework of rare event estimation and simulation, using tools from stochastic processes, measure changes via exponential martingales, large deviation principles, and Feynman–Kac semigroups.

PhD thesis (in progress)

Exploration in reinforcement learning with scarce resources
Cotutelle: LAAS-CNRS / Université de Toulouse III & PEDECIBA / Universidad de la República.
Supervisors: Paola Bermolen (Uruguay), Matthieu Jonckheere (France).
Expected defense: October 2026.

Teaching

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Research supervision

Research intern co-supervision · LAAS-CNRS / Toulouse INP, April–June 2024
Co-supervised with Dr. Matthieu Jonckheere. Over seven weeks, guided Malik Hacini in a research project on generalized spectral clustering. The internship resulted in an open-source repository (github.com/Malik-Hacini/Generalized-Spectral-Clustering ) and a written monograph presented at Toulouse INP.

IMERL, Faculty of Engineering, Universidad de la República

Teaching assistant (Ayudante G1 / Asistente G2) · July 2019 – December 2022

Outreach

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Imaginary Itinerante · Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de la República · August 2016 – October 2017
A mathematical outreach project visiting 14 cities across Uruguay, presenting interactive mathematical content to the general public. The project was documented in a short film.
imaginary.org/project/imaginary-uruguay

Latitud Ciencias · Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de la República · September 2016
Annual science outreach event open to school groups, families, and the general public. Staffed the mathematics stand, presenting research and interactive mathematical content.

CV

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You can download my CV (in Spanish) as a PDF below. Download CV (PDF)

Talks & Presentations

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Conference talks

Particle systems for policy evaluation in RL with sparse rewards.
IV European Conference on Queueing Theory (ECQT), Reykjavík, Iceland, May 2026.
When to Parallelize Stochastic Exploration of Rare Rewards in RL. (upcoming)
34th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO), Bruges, Belgium, August–September 2026.
Dimension drop for random walks on Fuchsian groups.
2nd Postgraduate Students Meeting, Faculty of Engineering, Udelar, Montevideo, December 2021.

Seminar talks

Particle systems for policy evaluation in RL with sparse rewards.
Séminaire SOLACE, LAAS-CNRS, Toulouse, May 2026.