Ramit Debnath has been selected to help design innovative policies for the UK Department of Work and Pensions
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has been appointed by the UK Department of Work and Pensions [DWP] to help design innovative policies and data-driven evidence to support social welfare and wellbeing programmes.
Ramit Debnath will be part of the UK government’s Methods Advisory Group [MAG], which supports DWP’s Chief Scientific Adviser in providing the department with the latest expert advice.
The group consists of world-leading independent methodological experts from a diverse range of disciplines and areas, who will provide cross-cutting advice to ensure the DWP utilises cutting-edge scientific, technical and analytical approaches when providing evidence to support policy and delivery decisions.
Ramit [2018], who did his PhD in Architecture, will be drawing on his expertise in human-centric Artificial Intelligence and computational social sciences. Appointments to the Group are for three years in the first instance.
DWP is responsible for delivering the state pension, working age benefits, disability and sickness benefits to 22 million citizens. The Department is directly responsible for both the design and the frontline delivery of its policies and services.
Ramit is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Social Design and Deputy Director of the Centre for Human-Inspired AI (CHIA) at the University of Cambridge. He is also the Director of the Cambridge Collective Intelligence & Design group and the climaTRACES lab at CRASSH, and is the Cambridge-lead for the Climate and Social Intelligence Lab with Caltech. Ramit is a fellow of Churchill College and Cambridge Zero and has visiting academic roles at the California Institute of Technology and the Indian Statistical Institute Kolkata. He sits on the steering committee of Cambridge’s CHIA, Centre for Data-Driven Discovery (C2D3) and the Centre for Climate Repair (CCR).
Ramit’s interdisciplinary research integrates engineering and computational social sciences with systems thinking, sociotechnical policy design and behavioural interventions to address barriers to climate action and sustainable development. He focuses on how individual behaviours influence the dynamics of collective decision-making and explores the potential of emergent AI to replicate these mechanisms to solve global challenges.
