Winners

BILL THOMPSON

Grand Prize Winner | 2022 NOMIS & Science Young Explorer Award

Bill Thompson is assistant professor and head of the Experimental Cognition Laboratory in the Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley (US). He received an undergraduate degree from Sheffield Hallam University and a PhD from the University of Edinburgh. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University, he started his lab at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2022. His research examines the computational processes that support human reasoning, creativity and language.

Read his award-winning essay: “An ever-evolving mind”


CÉLIA LACAUX

Finalist | 2022 NOMIS & Science Young Explorer Award

Célia Lacaux is a postdoctoral researcher in the Sleep and Cognition Neuroimaging Laboratory, Campus Biotech, University of Geneva (Switzerland). She received her undergraduate degree from Aix-Marseille University and Imperial College London and her master’s degrees from Ecole Normale Supérieure and University College London. She then completed a PhD in 2021 at the Paris Brain Institute under the supervision of D. Oudiette and I. Arnulf. Her research primarily focuses on the relationship between sleep and creativity.

Read her award-winning essay: “A doorway into possibility”


STEPHEN KISSLER

Finalist | 2022 NOMIS & Science Young Explorer Award

Stephen Kissler is a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University (Boston, US) and incoming assistant professor and head of the Kissler Lab in the Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder (US). He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado and a PhD from the University of Cambridge, both in applied mathematics. His research examines how immunological and behavioral factors influence the spread of respiratory viruses.

“Read his award-winning essay: “Revealing contagion”