About Me

Hi, I’m Joe! I’m currently a PhD student in the Department of Statistics at the University of Oxford, supervised by Arnaud Doucet and George Deligiannidis. Here, I’m working on developing a theoretical understanding of generative modelling techniques, with a particular focus on diffusion models and variational autoencoders. For more about my research, see here.

Previously, I completed my undergraduate and master’s in mathematics at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. I’ve done an assortment of research work in various fields, including multi-agent RL at CHAI, algebraic geometry in DPMMS at Cambridge, global health and development interventions at Charity Entrepreneurship, and quantitative finance at Jane Street Capital.

Alongside my research, I’m also involved in the Effective Altruism movement. I coordinate the Oxford AI Safety Hub, which promotes the safe development of powerful artificial intelligence. While at Cambridge, I also helped found Raise, a national student movement which has raised over £380,000 for the Against Malaria Foundation to date.

In my spare time, you’ll typically find me running along the river in Oxford, playing the guitar (badly!), or reading. To get in touch, you can email me at benton@stats.ox.ac.uk.