Dr James Whittington
Dr James Whittington is a computational neuroscientist and AI researcher working at the intersection of neuroscience, artificial intelligence and mathematics.
He studied physics, medicine and neuroscience at University of Oxford, where he completed a DPhil in Neuroscience. He later held a Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship at Stanford University.
His research focuses on the neural mechanisms underlying flexible behaviour, particularly how structured knowledge is learned and generalised. By combining computational modelling, theory and neuroscience, his work examines how hierarchical and compositional representations support reasoning, inference and decision-making.
A central theme of his research is understanding the role of the hippocampal formation and prefrontal cortex in organising knowledge. His work studies how cognitive maps and structured representations support flexible behaviour across both spatial and non-spatial domains.
Alongside this, he develops and analyses neural network models trained on structured tasks, using these systems to investigate when and why different representations and algorithms emerge. This work contributes to research connecting neuroscience and artificial intelligence.
Dr James Whittington is a Principal Investigator in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford. His work includes publications in journals and conferences such as Nature, Nature Neuroscience, Neuron, ICLR and NeurIPS.
As co-founder of Thinking About Thinking, he contributes to shaping the organisation's scientific agenda and programmes across AI, neuroscience and the mathematics of intelligence.
