Howick, a native of Montreal, Canada, is a graduate of Westmount High School. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Engineering from the Dartmouth College, and graduate degrees from The London School of Economics and the University of Oxford. His PhD in Philosophy of medicine at the London School of Economics was conducted under the supervision of Professors Nancy Cartwright and John Worrall, with a thesis entitled Philosophical essentials in evidence-based medicine: Evaluating the epistemological role of double blinding and placebo controls, published in 2008. He is the Director of the Oxford Empathy Programme at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford.
