Willard is a research assistant and an undergraduate finalist reading the Psychological and Behavioural Sciences Tripos at Cambridge. He is particularly fascinated by the ways in which academic research can be leveraged to supplement policymaking particularly through the use of nudges and other behavioural policymaking techniques. During his stint as a Summer Research Assistant at the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab, Willard embarked on a project to understand the nature of climate change polarisation on social media platforms, through the use of machine learning techniques such as a deep learning-based topic model (BERTopic), network analysis, and sentiment analysis. Willard is keen to further leverage artificial intelligence algorithms to provide a quantitative perspective on areas including but not limited to behavioural interventions and public policy.
