Tom Rainforth has been awarded the title of Professor of Statistical Machine Learning and, as of 1 September 2026, is also a Fellow of Jesus College.
He leads the RainML Research Lab, currently comprising four postdocs and twelve doctoral students, and is principal investigator on the ERC Starting Grant Data-Driven Algorithms for Data Acquisition, running until February 2029. His research spans optimal experimental design and probabilistic machine learning, with particular interests in Bayesian experimental design, active learning, uncertainty quantification, and large language models.
Tom has been part of the Department since 2017, initially joining as a postdoc in the group of Professor Yee Whye Teh, before starting to lead his own group in 2019, and then taking up his Associate Professor role in September 2024. Prior to this he completed his DPhil at Oxford in the Engineering Science Department under the supervision of Frank Wood and Maike Osborne.
Oxford × QRT Labs welcomes first DPhil cohort and announces new Director
The University of Oxford has welcomed the first cohort of DPhil students to Oxford × QRT Labs, part of a long-term research initiative between Qube Research & Technologies (QRT) and the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London.
Applications for postgraduate study are now open for 2027–28 entry
Postgraduate study at Oxford Statistics offers the chance to work across a broad range of research, from statistical theory and methodology, probability and machine learning to applications in areas including genetics, epidemiology, computational biology, finance and the social sciences.
What does a statistician do for the England football team?
From squad selection to modelling how footballs behave at altitude, statistician Matt Penn explains how data is helping shape the modern game, and why coaches will always matter more than the numbers.