Isaac Reid

I’m a final-year PhD student at the Machine Learning Group within the Cambridge University Engineering Department. I'm interested in scalable machine learning. I currently live in London, where I'm working on robotics foundation models with Google DeepMind whilst writing up my thesis.

Donostia, April 2024

Donostia, April 2024

I’m on the job market, looking for research scientist positions beginning in 2026. Please reach out if you think we might be a good fit!

I’m co-supervised by Dr Adrian Weller and Prof. Rich Turner, and collaborate closely with Prof. Krzysztof Choromanski. I’m funded by a Trinity College external studentship and a Google PhD Fellowship. I intend to graduate in February 2026.

Research. I’m currently interested in efficient transformer attention for graph-structured data. I’ve designed novel Monte Carlo estimators to approximate the softmax kernel, random walk-based algorithms for building ‘graph random features’, and new position encodings using Lie groups. I’m also a dilettante in statistical physics, approximate Bayesian inference, and influence functions. Sometimes, I help train foundation models for robotics.

Teaching. I taught mathematics for second-year undergraduate engineers at Trinity (2023-2025), and continue to mentor fantastic master’s students. I was a guest lecturer for the 2024-2025 Cambridge MLMI course, providing an introduction to transformers.

Past lives. I obtained my MPhys at Hertford College, Oxford, where I submitted my dissertation on entanglement barriers in dual-unitary quantum circuits, supervised by Dr Bruno Bertini and Prof. Fabian Essler. I’ve also researched simplicity bias in deep neural networks with Prof. Ard Louis at the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, Oxford, and Bose-Einstein condensation in active matter with Dr Benoît Mahault and Prof. Ramin Golestanian at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self Organisation, Göttingen. I worked at this early-stage startup for a year, developing adaptive optics for laser fabrication of qubits inside diamonds, and advised IQ Capital as a part-time research associate.

Contact me at ir337(at)cam.ac.uk.

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