Bill Thompson is the grand prize winner of the 2022 NOMIS & Science Young Explorer Award. He is assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Thompson 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 in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2022. His research examines the computational processes that support human reasoning, creativity, and language. His research on emerging experimental methods that combine cognitive-behavioral studies with machine learning algorithms to trace how knowledge is transmitted between people is detailed in his award-winning essay “An ever-evolving mind.”