I was invited to an Ask Me Anything session in 2017 available here
which thanks to my readers is in the top 10 all time Reddit/PLOS Science AMAs (2018)
which thanks to my readers is in the top 10 all time Reddit/PLOS Science AMAs (2018)
Looking at Mt Saint-Michel
from St Malo
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I consider myself a 'computational natural scientist' (Greg Chaitin described me as a "new kind of practical theoretician"). I co-lead the Algorithmic Dynamics Lab at SciLifeLab and the Karolinska Institute (institution that awards the Nobel Prize) in Stockholm, Sweden, where I team up with experimental scientists (molecular biologists, immunologists, oncologists, toxicologists, etc) to understand biological processes and living systems. I am also the head of the Algorithmic Nature Group, the Paris-based lab that started the Online Algorithmic Complexity Calculator and the Human Randomness Perception and Generation Project (prompting wide media coverage). Previously, I was a Research Associate at the Behavioural and Evolutionary Theory Lab at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Sheffield in the UK before joining the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford as a Senior Researcher (faculty member).
My research aim is to understand the behaviour of artificial and biological systems from a computational perspective, and to develop methods to reprogram biological and synthetic cells at a molecular/genetic level like we do computers. It combines the power of computability theory, dynamical systems and information theory to develop model-driven methods to find first principles and mechanistic causes of natural processes. My research consists thus in cracking the universe (quite literally) producing candidate computer programs explaining (and possibly generating) all these processes from small pieces of digital code. This has led to the field that we have called algorithmic information dynamics based on the theory of algorithmic probability (c.f. Marvin Minsky quotation below). I approach this challenge by producing empirical approximations to what is known as the Universal Distribution (c.f. Research) which requires producing all possible (discrete) generative models. I then develop methods based on fundamental science and numerical calculations conducting the largest ever searches undertaken in some of the largest supercomputers in the world and try to make sense of all these models and data by (literally) putting all the pieces together. I am proud to be involved in editorial tasks of journals and book series that avoid publishing bold, embellished, and often irreproducible science that seek only to maximise profit ripping off authors, readers (through governments and firewalls) and reviewers, and/or maximise ill-devised contra scientia impact factor indexes. I am the Editor of Complex Systems, the first journal in the field founded by Stephen Wolfram in 1987, and I am member of the Editorial Board of publications and book series such as the Springer series on Emergence, Complexity and Computation, the journal Philosophies and Frontiers in Robotics and AI for its Computational Intelligence section. I also serve as consultant and advisor for labs such as the Living Systems Lab and companies such as AlgoCyte, Intuition Machine and neomesis. |
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Latest news
- I am guest-editing a special issue of the journal Philosophies, together with Prof. Selmer Bringsjord, on the Philosophy and Epistemology of Deep Learning, if you are interested in submitting a manuscript please contact me, submission deadline will be likely by the end of the year.
- Our online course on Algorithmic Information Dynamics---A Computational Approach to Causality and Molecular Biology: From Complex Networks to Reprogramming Cells hosted by the Santa Fe Institute's Complexity Explorer platform and will launch on June 11th, 2018. Stay tuned and enrol yourself starting on April 30, 2018! The course is also intended to be later released on the EdX platform.
- Book season time, 4 books coming out in the next months:
- Our book Algorithmic Information Dynamics: A Computational Approach to Causality and Molecular Biology. From Networks to Cells has been approved for publication by Cambridge University Press and will be available later this year (with N.A. Kiani and J. Tegnér)
- Our book Methods and Applications of Algorithmic Complexity: From Sequences to Graphs is also coming out soon published by Springer Verlag later this year (with F. Soler-Toscano and N. Gauvrit).
- Two more books will see the light next year: Algorithmic Cognition (with N. Gauvrit and J. Tegnér) and Graph Complexity (with N.A. Kiani and J. Tegnér), both to be published by Springer Verlag.
Book editor and author
Volume contributor:
I contributed to the final materialization of the Leibniz-Chaitin medallion after Leibniz' original design 300 years ago to celebrate his discovery of binary arithmetic
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The Leibniz-Chaitin medallion story in celebration of the works of Greg Chaitin and the discovery of binary arithmetic from which, according to Leibniz, everything can be created
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I have visited > 250 cities in about 50 countries giving talks related to my research in about half of them:
Histograms of visited countries and continents:
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