Scholars
Ramit Debnath
University of Cambridge
Based in
United Kingdom
Europe
Dr. Ramit Debnath is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Social Design at the University of Cambridge. He is the Director of the Cambridge Collective Intelligence & Design group, the Cambridge-lead for the Climate and Social Intelligence Lab with Caltech and the co-director of the climaTRACES lab at CRASSH. His 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. Dr. Debnath has a background in electrical engineering and computational social sciences, earned his MPhil and PhD at Cambridge as a Gates Scholar. He has held positions at Caltech, the Indian Statistical Institute, the International Energy Agency, IIT Bombay, and Stanford University.
Country(ies) of Specialty
India Nigeria United KingdomFocus areas of expertise
Greenwashing Geoengineering Public opinion Social MediaPublications
Articles
Relevant publications (Full list here: Google Scholar):
Amazeen, Michelle A., et al. “The “Future of Energy”? Building resilience to ExxonMobil’s disinformation through disclosures and inoculation.” npj Climate Action 4.1 (2025): 19. https://www.nature.com/articles/s44168-025-00209-6
Seshadri, Ashwin K., Ajay Gambhir, and Ramit Debnath. “Navigating Systemic Risks in Low-Carbon Energy Transitions in an Era of Global Polycrisis.” Global Sustainability (2025): 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2025.7
Debnath, Ramit, Nataliya Tkachenko, and Malay Bhattacharyya. “Enabling people-centric climate action using human-in-the-loop artificial intelligence: a review.” Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 61 (2025): 101482. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2025.101482
Cologna, Viktoria, et al. “Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries.” Nature Human Behaviour (2025): 1-18. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-02090-5
Mede, Niels G., et al. “Perceptions of science, science communication, and climate change attitudes in 68 countries–the TISP dataset.” Scientific data 12.1 (2025): 114. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-024-04100-7
van Daalen, Kim Robin, et al. “Bridging the gender, climate, and health gap: the road to COP29.” The Lancet Planetary Health 8.12 (2024): e1088-e1105. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(24)00270-5
Nielsen, Kristian S., et al. “Underestimation of personal carbon footprint inequality in four diverse countries.” Nature Climate Change 14.11 (2024): 1136-1143. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-02130-y
Nsude, Chinedu C., Joshua J. Wimhurst, and Ramit Debnath. “A global fairtrade partnership needed to address injustices in the supply chains of clean energy technology materials.” MRS Energy & Sustainability 11.2 (2024): 401-408. https://doi.org/10.1557/s43581-024-00113-2
Debnath, Ramit. “Communicating my value.” Science (New York, NY) 385.6710 (2024): 802. https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.ads3721
Debnath, Ramit, et al. “Do fossil fuel firms reframe online climate and sustainability communication? A data-driven analysis.” npj Climate Action 2.1 (2023): 47. https://www.nature.com/articles/s44168-023-00086-x
Müller-Hansen, Finn, et al. “Attention, sentiments and emotions towards emerging climate technologies on Twitter.” Global Environmental Change 83 (2023): 102765. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2023.102765
Debnath, Ramit, and Yi-Ting Lin. “A better count of heat-related deaths needed to help the vulnerable.” Nature India (2024). https://www.nature.com/articles/d44151-024-00084-w
Alvarez, R. Michael, Ramit Debnath, and Daniel Ebanks. “Why don’t Americans trust university researchers and why it matters for climate change.” PLoS Climate 2.9 (2023): e0000147. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000147
Debnath, Ramit, et al. “Harnessing human and machine intelligence for planetary-level climate action.” npj Climate Action 2.1 (2023): 20. https://www.nature.com/articles/s44168-023-00056-3
Debnath, Ramit, et al. “Conspiracy spillovers and geoengineering.” Iscience 26.3 (2023). https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(23)00243-2
Debnath, Ramit, et al. “Facilitating system-level behavioural climate action using computational social science.” Nature Human Behaviour 7.2 (2023): 155-156. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01527-7
Ali, Muez, et al. “Bridging the divide in energy policy research: Empirical evidence from global collaborative networks.” Energy Policy 173 (2023): 113380. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2022.113380
Debnath, Ramit, et al. “Social media enables people-centric climate action in the hard-to-decarbonise building sector.” Scientific Reports 12.1 (2022): 19017. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-23624-9
Debnath, Ramit, et al. “Political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental dimensions of electric vehicle adoption in the United States: A social-media interaction analysis.” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 152 (2021): 111707. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2021.111707
Debnath, Ramit, et al. “Words against injustices: A deep narrative analysis of energy cultures in poverty of Abuja, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro.” Energy Research & Social Science 72 (2021): 101892. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101892
Debnath, Ramit, et al. “Grounded reality meets machine learning: A deep-narrative analysis framework for energy policy research.” Energy research & social science 69 (2020): 101704. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101704
Debnath, Ramit, and Ronita Bardhan. “India nudges to contain COVID-19 pandemic: A reactive public policy analysis using machine-learning based topic modelling.” PloS one 15.9 (2020): e0238972.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238972