# Jascha Sohl-Dickstein

Research and product · Researcher at Anthropic · joined 2024

Best known for inventing diffusion models. Before his PhD he worked on sending rovers to Mars.

Full profile: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/anthropic/people/jascha-sohl-dickstein

**At Anthropic:**
- Feb 2024 – present: Member of Technical Staff
Sources: [1](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jascha-sohl-dickstein-47188521)

**Career before Anthropic:**
- Aug 2015 – Jan 2024: Google, Senior → Staff → Senior Staff → Principal Research Scientist
- 2012–2015: Khan Academy, Academic Resident
- 2012–2015: Stanford University, Visiting Scholar
- 2001–2005: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Research associate, Mars Exploration Rovers
Sources: [1](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jascha-sohl-dickstein-47188521)

**Education:**
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Biophysics, University of California, Berkeley, 2005-2012
Sources: [1](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jascha-sohl-dickstein-47188521)

**Lesser-known facts:**
- PhD in biophysics from UC Berkeley. [1](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jascha-sohl-dickstein-47188521)
- Was an academic resident at Khan Academy. [1](http://sohldickstein.com/)
- Co-authored the 2004 Science papers on the Pancam cameras of the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers while at NASA JPL. [1](http://sohldickstein.com/s/CV_jascha_20260502.pdf)
- Earned a second Cornell BA, as a College Scholar, in quantum computing alongside his physics degree. [1](http://sohldickstein.com/s/CV_jascha_20260502.pdf)
- Co-wrote "Deep knowledge tracing" (NeurIPS 2015), which grew out of his education work at Khan Academy. [1](http://sohldickstein.com/s/CV_jascha_20260502.pdf)
- Wrote the original design doc for Google's BIG-bench benchmark and was its top GitHub contributor. [1](http://sohldickstein.com/s/CV_jascha_20260502.pdf)
- Proposed "the hot mess theory of AI misalignment" in a 2023 blog post, before joining Anthropic. [1](https://sohl-dickstein.github.io/)
- Showed in a viral 2024 post that the boundary between trainable and untrainable hyperparameters is fractal. [1](https://x.com/jaschasd/status/1756930242965606582)

**Interviews and talks:**
- [Talk: Advice for a young investigator in the first and last days of the Anthropocene (2025)](https://x.com/jaschasd/status/1972360405885637021)

**Known for:**
- Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics (2015)
- Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations
- Density estimation using Real NVP
- Beyond the Imitation Game: Quantifying and extrapolating the capabilities of language models (2022)
- Position: Levels of AGI for Operationalizing Progress on the Path to AGI (2024)
Sources: [1](http://sohldickstein.com/)

Researched with Autumn (https://www.autumn.ai) from public sources. Updated 2026-10-18. Everyone at Anthropic: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/anthropic/people