PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

James Whittington

Also known as James C. R. Whittington

James Whittington is a computational neuroscientist at the University of Oxford whose models of the hippocampal formation connect brain research with machine learning. Educated at Oxford in physics, medicine and neuroscience, he did his PhD with Rafal Bogacz and Tim Behrens, and in 2020 he introduced the Tolman-Eichenbaum machine in Cell. In 2021, he showed that transformers with recurrent position encodings replicate hippocampal place and grid representations, and his 2023 ICLR paper on disentanglement with biological constraints earned an Honorable Mention. He coauthored the Zamba language model in 2024 and won a European Research Council Starting Grant in 2025. He is a Principal Investigator in the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford and a co-founder of the nonprofit Thinking About Thinking.

Now at
University of Oxford and Thinking About Thinking
Badges

Timeline

  1. 2017–2019

    Backpropagation in the brain

    He studies physics, medicine and neuroscience at Oxford and does his PhD there with Rafal Bogacz and Tim Behrens. His 2017 paper with Bogacz in Neural Computation approximates the error backpropagation algorithm in a predictive coding network with local Hebbian synaptic plasticity, and a 2019 paper in Trends in Cognitive Sciences covers theories of error back-propagation in the brain.

  2. 2018–2020

    The Tolman-Eichenbaum machine

    In 2018, he presents "Generalisation of structural knowledge in the hippocampal-entorhinal system" as an oral paper at NeurIPS. In 2020, he is first author of the Cell paper "The Tolman-Eichenbaum Machine: Unifying space and relational memory through generalisation in the hippocampal formation", written with six coauthors including Timothy Behrens.

  3. 2021–2022

    Transformers and cognitive maps

    In December 2021, he posts a paper with Joseph Warren and Timothy Behrens showing that transformers with recurrent position encodings replicate the place and grid representations of the hippocampal formation. In September 2022, he and three coauthors, including Behrens, publish the Nature Neuroscience review "How to build a cognitive map", which organizes models of the hippocampus and other brain areas into a clear ontology.

  4. By 2023

    Wellcome Scholar at Stanford

    In January 2023, he is a Sir Henry Wellcome Scholar split between Stanford and Oxford, and gives the Wu Tsai Neuro MBCT seminar "Organizing knowledge for flexible behavior" at Stanford.

  5. 2023

    Honorable mention at ICLR

    His ICLR 2023 paper with Will Dorrell, Surya Ganguli and Timothy Behrens, "Disentanglement with Biological Constraints: A Theory of Functional Cell Types", earns an Honorable Mention. The paper proves that nonnegativity and energy efficiency in activity and weights promote disentangled representations, and uses the result to explain why the brain partitions cells into types such as grid and object-vector cells.

  6. 2024

    The Zamba language model

    In 2024, he is a coauthor of the Zamba technical report, which presents a 7B model that combines a Mamba backbone with a single shared attention module and trains on 1T tokens from openly available datasets. He also coauthors Zyda, a 1.3 T dataset for open language modeling.

  7. September 2025

    An ERC Starting Grant

    In September 2025, he is one of eleven Oxford early-career researchers awarded a European Research Council Starting Grant, valued at €1.5 million over five years. His project studies how brain networks support flexible behaviour, using neural network models and collaboration with experimental neuroscientists.

  8. As of October 2026

    Principal Investigator at Oxford

    He is a Principal Investigator in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, where he leads a group researching fundamentals in artificial intelligence and neuroscience. He is also a co-founder and director of the nonprofit Thinking About Thinking and consults for AI technology companies.

Career

  1. NowUniversity of OxfordPrincipal Investigator
  2. NowThinking About ThinkingCo-founder, Director
  3. From 2023Stanford UniversitySir Henry Wellcome Scholar

Education

  1. University of OxfordPhD

From the biography.

  1. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes University of Oxford. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  2. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes University of Oxford. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  3. Companies supply the most prior-work hires at 7 of the 9 frontier AI labsIncludes University of Oxford. Our estimates of the organizations where 550 people worked directly before joining 9 frontier AI labs across 620 career transitions, comparing the main feeder organizations per lab.
  4. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorateIncludes University of Oxford. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorate. Across 2,116 people with both an undergraduate degree and a doctorate recorded, we trace which undergraduate schools feed which doctoral programs, how often students stay at the same school, and how paths differ by birth-country region.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. James Whittington - Organizing knowledge for flexible behavior | Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute neuroscience.stanford.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. James Whittington | The Transmitter: Neuroscience News and Perspectives thetransmitter.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. James Whittington jcrwhittington.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. [2112.04035] Relating transformers to models and neural representations of the hippocampal formation arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. How to build a cognitive map | Nature Neuroscience nature.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. ICLR 2023 Awards iclr.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. [2405.16712] Zamba: A Compact 7B SSM Hybrid Model arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Oxford researchers win ERC Starting Grants to tackle global challenges openaccessgovernment.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Professor James Whittington BMBCh (Oxon), DPhil (Oxon) | Thinking About Thinking thinkingaboutthinking.org. Checked 21 October 2026.