cv

My CV is provided below for further details about my experience and work.

Basics

Name Joshua Sylvester
Label Cyber Security Researcher
Summary A motivated and hardworking researcher with a passion for artificial intelligence and cyber security. Experienced in reinforcement learning, cyber defence, and machine learning applications. Committed to advancing autonomous cyber defence through scalable reinforcement learning methods and the detection and mitigation of novel threats.

Work

  • 2025.07 - 2026.01
    Visiting Researcher
    Alan Turing Institute
    Researching reinforcement learning for autonomous cyber defence.
  • 2023.01 - Present
    Graduate Teaching Assistant
    University of Kent
    Lead instructor during practical sessions, responsible for grading, feedback, academic support, and facilitating student engagement.
    • Led undergraduate computing classes.
    • Prepared instructional materials and guided student projects.
  • 2022.06 - 2022.12
    Security Research Intern
    Orange Cyberdefense
    Applied machine learning to cybersecurity problems such as text classification and named-entity recognition. Automated data labelling and built containerised solutions for production.
    • Developed web scrapers and automated labelling pipelines.
    • Produced monthly and final-year security landscape reports.

Education

  • 2023.01 - Present
    PhD (Ongoing)
    University of Kent
    Cyber Security and Artificial Intelligence
  • 2019.09 - 2022.06
    Bachelor’s Degree (Hons)
    University of Kent
    Computer Science
  • 2017.09 - 2019.06
    Pre-University
    East Norfolk Sixth Form College
    A-Levels
    • Computer Science (B)
    • Chemistry (A)
    • Mathematics (B)

Awards

  • 2026.04.07
    Best Student Paper Award
    1st International Workshop on AI Safety and Security (AI-SS) - EDCC 2026
    Received the Best Student Paper Award at the AI Safety and Security workshop for the paper 'Agentic Knowledge Distillation: Autonomous Training of Small Language Models for SMS Threat Detection'.
  • 2025.09.25
    Distinguished Paper Award
    ESORICS 2025 - AutonomousCyber 2025
    Received the Distinguished Paper Award at the AutonomousCyber 2025 workshop for outstanding research contribution to autonomous cyber defence.
  • 2022.08.01
    Outstanding Overall Performance in the School of Computing
    University of Kent
    Awarded to the highest performing student of the year for achieving the best overall marks in the degree programme.
  • 2022.08.01
    Best Final Year Computing Research Project award
    University of Kent
    Best Final Year Computing Research Project award, given to the student with the highest performing research project in the degree programme.

Skills

Technical Skills
Cyber Security
Reinforcement Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Python
Docker
Data Analysis
Soft Skills
Attention to Detail
Creativity
Organisation
Training and Teaching
Teamwork
Time Management
Communication

Projects

  • Reward Shaping for Network Defence
    Collaborative research project with Dstl ARCD exploring reinforcement learning techniques for autonomous cyber defence agents.
    • Applied reinforcement learning to network defence tasks.

Interests

Hobbies
Fishing
Swimming
Gym
Reading
Cooking