Rich Barton-Cooper

Rich is a research manager in London and a former MATS scholar. He completed his Master's in Mathematical and Theoretical Physics at Oxford (2013-17), focusing on plasma physics and nuclear fusion. He found AI safety through 80,000 Hours four months into his Physics PhD at Imperial, which motivated him to leave the PhD in early 2018 to upskill as a software engineer instead. With strong engineering skills, he began transitioning into AI safety by completing AISF in 2024 and ML4Good in 2025, and worked with Marius Hobbhahn on black-box monitoring in MATS 8.0 and 8.1. He has also taught at ML4Good.