I’m a palaeobiologist and a Wits MIND Fellow, with more than two decades of fossil excavation and research experience in South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind. My research examines human evolution through the relationships between early hominins, other animals and their environments.

My current research connects palaeonotology, neuroscience and AI around a shared question: how does intelligence emerge, and what enables it to expand? Our team is developing Constraint-Shaped Intelligence, a testable hypothesis that changing combinations of constraints shape the emergence of new capabilities. The programme investigates how ecological, energetic, biological, developmental and social conditions interact to open or restrict possibilities for intelligence.

We test this hypothesis independently through two research arms. I lead the evolutionary investigation, drawing on hominin fossils, archaeological evidence, reconstructed environments and comparisons with other animal lineages. This work examines whether shifts in constraints preceded increases in cognitive and behavioural complexity. The AI arm uses controlled experiments with reinforcement learning agents, embodied robots, and other artificial systems, varying the limits on energy, memory, computation, sensing, and communication. Together with AI researchers and neuroscientists, we ask whether the relationship between changing constraints and expanding capabilities holds across both biological and artificial systems. The programme is designed to identify where the hypothesis succeeds, where it needs refinement and where it fails.

Alongside my research, I bring extensive experience in scientific leadership, research development and international collaboration. I previously served as Projects Director and Interim Director of South Africa’s DSTI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Palaeosciences. I helped secure research funding, build strategic partnerships and strengthen the national palaeoscience community. At the MIND Institute, I contribute to interdisciplinary research and strategic development.