William Hohnen-Ford

I am currently a Research Assistant at the Design Bioethics Lab within the Neuroscience, Ethics & Society (NEUROSEC) research group. I have an interdisciplinary background spanning Cognitive Science, Philosophy and Policy.

I earned my undergraduate degree from University College London (UCL), where I concentrated on Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Policy. My academic focus revolved around the ethical implications of using developmental neuroscience on poverty and inequality research to guide socioeconomic policy.

Subsequently, I completed an MSc in Cognitive and Decision Sciences, honing my skills in quantitative approaches to cognitive science, including Machine Learning, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), and Neural Computation. My thesis was titled Leveraging Large Language Models to Measure Linguistic Markers of Well-Being and Mystical Phenomenology - A Longitudinal Study of Psychedelic-Induced Changes in Reddit Posts. This project involved web-scraping a longitudinal sample of over 13 million Reddit posts, aiming to identify changes in valence, arousal, and religious/mystical language in posts from approximately 20,000 users before and after psychedelic experiences. 

I've also interned at The Constitution Unit where I worked in the analysis team for The Future of Democracy in the UK projects. 

Broadly, my interests span Neuroscience, Philosophy, AI, and Policy. I am particularly interested in the following areas:

• Ethics in AI, Data, and Neuroscience.

• Psychedelics, Psychotherapy, and Mental Health.

• The Psychological Impact of Social Media Algorithms and Misinformation.