Hector Zenil
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​
​It [The Analytical Engine] can do whatever we know how to order it to perform
​Ada Lovelace


Current & Past Affiliations

​
Senior Researcher
Faculty Member
Department of Computer Science
University of Oxford, U.K.

​Senior Research Associate
Special Projects (office of the CEO, S. Wolfram)
Wolfram Research, Urbana-Champaign, IL. U.S.

Research Fellow
Special Projects Group (office of the CEO, S. Wolfram)
Wolfram Research, Boston, MA. U.S.

Research Associate
Paris Reasoning
University of Paris and EPHE, Paris, France

Visiting Professor
Institute for Mathematical Sciences
National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore

Visiting Scholar
Department of Philosophy
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, U.S.

Visiting Scholar
NASA Mars Gravity Biosatellite
Payload Team
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston, U.S.

​

Lab Leader
​
Algorithmic Dynamics Lab
Unit of Computational Medicine
Science for Life Laboratory (SciLife Lab)

Center for Molecular Medicine
Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden


​Assistant Professor
Unit of Computational Medicine
Science for Life Laboratory (SciLife Lab)
Unit of Clinical Epidemiology
Center for Molecular Medicine
Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden


Director and PI
Algorithmic Nature Group
Laboratoire de Recherche Scientifique pour les Sciences Naturelles et Numériques, LABoRES, Paris, France

Postdoctoral Research Associate
Behavioural and Evolutionary Theory Lab
Department of Computer Science/Kroto Research Institute
University of Sheffield, U.K.

Teaching/Lecturer Assistant in Artificial Intelligence
Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Sciences
National University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico City, Mexico

Education

PhD. Philosophy and Epistemology
(highest honours with congratulations by the jury)
University of Paris 1/Panthéon-Sorbonne/ENS Ulm/CNRS)
Paris, France

Evaluation committee: J. Mosconi, J.P. Delahaye, B. Cooper, A. Adamatzky and C. Imbert

PhD. Theoretical Computer Science
(highest honours)
University of Lille
​
Lille, France

Evaluation committee: J.P. Delahaye, G. Chaitin, S. Grigorieff, P. Mathieu and H. Zwirn

M.Phil./Res. Logic (LoPHISS)
University of Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne),
Ecole Nationale Supérieure  & 
CNRS
Paris, France
Supervisor: J. Dubucs


BSc. Mathematics
National University of Mexico (UNAM)
Mexico City, Mexico
Supervisor: F. Hernández-Quiroz


​Certificates in Genomics and Immunology
Department of Continuing Education
University of Oxford
Oxford, UK


Wolfram Science Summer School
Brown University
​
Providence, R.I. U.S.A.

Member of the following societies and organizations
  • London Mathematical Society (elected member in 2015)
  • Oxford University Scientific Society - OUSS (lifetime)
  • Foundational Questions Institute (lifetime)
  • Computability in Europe (lifetime)
  • The Oxford Invariants Society (Oxford Math students society) (lifetime)
  • Cambridge Networks Network - University of Cambridge

Students (Co-)Supervision

  • Liliana Badillo (former student of Barry Cooper) (postdoc)
  • Santiago Hernandez, National University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico (PhD)
  • Yue Deng, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden (Masters)
  • Alberto Hernandez, National University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico (PhD)
  • Jakub Olczak, Karolinska Institutet (KI) and Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden (Summer)
  • Daniel Wilson-Nunn, University of Warwick, U.K. (Summer)
  • Alyssa Adams, Arizona State University, Tempe, U.S. (Summer)
  • Ronnie Rodrigues Pereira, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden (Master's project)
  • ​Yanbo Zhang (USTC, China)

Selected Online Presentations (SlideShare)

  • Graph Spectra through Network Complexity Measures: Information Content of Eigenvalues
  • Information Theory and Programmable Medicine
  • Fractal Dimension of Space-time Diagrams and the Runtime Complexity of Small Turing Machines
  • Cognition, Information & Subjective Computation
  • Information Content of Complex Networks
  • Algorithmic Information Theory and Computational Biology
  • L’approche algorithmique de l’aléatoire 
  • Towards a stable definition of Algorithmic Randomness 
  • A Numerical Method for the Evaluation of Kolmogorov Complexity: An alternative to lossless compression algorithms 
  • Complexity and Computation in Nature: How can we test for artificial life?
  • Fractal Dimension versus Computational Complexity​

Organizing, Reviewing & Committee Memberships

  • Guest Editor of the following journal special issues:
    • Seminars in Developmental Cell Biology (Elsevier), special issue on information theory to molecular biology
    • Information (MDPI), special issue on the Physics of Information
  • Invited editorial board member of:
    • Frontiers (a Nature group journal) in Robotics and AI (specialty computational intelligence)
    • Springer Book Series on Emergence, Complexity and Computation in Nature.
  • Member of the national body of researchers SNI, CONACYT (SNI II)
  • Member of the Registro CONACYT de Evaluadores Acreditados (RCEA) (Mexican National Science Council)
  • Expert scientific evaluator/reviewer for:
    • The National Science Foundation (NSF), USA. 2012.
    • The European Commission (FP7 and H2020 proposals) since 2011.
    • The CONICYT (Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica), Chilean government, 2009
    • The National Fund for Scientific Research FWO Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek - Vlaanderen (FWO), Flanders, Belgium (FWO-expert), 2015
    • The Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) annual essay contest, 2012-2015.
    • Peer reviewed for the following journals: Theoretical Computer Science; Fundamenta Informaticae; Complex Systems; Nonlinearity; Information Processing Letters; Discrete Applied Mathematics; International Journal of Unconventional Computing; Natural Computing; New Journal of Physics, and PLoS One.
    • Book and paper reviewer: For the ACM Computing Reviews (more than 25 reviews published, some of them featured selected review and selected reviewer).
  • Program committee member of (links were functional at the time of the event and may help you trace it through the Internet archive):
    • AUTOMATA 2020 (chair)
    • ALIFE 2019
    • AUTOMATA 2019
    • ​​LOD 2018
    • SIRS-2018​
    • SE4COG 2018
    • ​ALIFE 2018
    • AUTOMATA 2018
    • IEEE SSCI 2017
    • ECAL 2017
    • IEEE ICNSC 2016 (workshop co-organizer)
    • ALIFE 2016
    • 2015 IEEE ALIFE
    • SIRS-2015
    • ECSA 2015
    • IACAP 2014
    • ROR/AISB50 2014
    • ALIFE 2014
    • IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence 2014
    • ECAL 2013
    • ISCS 2013
    • The Alan Turing Year 2012
    • ECCS 2012
    • NC @ AISB/IACAP 2012
    • ISCS 2012
    • WCSCM2011: chair
    • JOUAL 2009: Co-organizer
    • Midwest NKS 2008 : Co-organizer

Awards & Grants

  • Swedish Research Council grant worth 3,690,000 SEK (~.5M USD).
  • Swedish Wenner-Gren Center Foundation for Scientific Research worth 10,000 Euros.
  • Selected young researcher to the Heidelberg Laureate Forum to closely interact with Fields, Abel and Turing prize winners during a week at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.
  • John Templeton Foundation grant worth 180,000 USD for project on Habitable Zones of Complexity Measures to investigate the interplay of complexity in causal evolving networks.
  • Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) grant worth 40,000 USD and mini-grants summing about 10K USD awarded by way of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation for travel support in the context of my "The Nature of Computation and the Physics of Information", "Computation and Biology", and "Computation and Time", (FQXi-MGA-1316, 2011-93849 (4661) and FQXi-MGA-1212), 2012-2014.
  • Appointed member of the National Researchers Body (Sistema Nacional de Investigadores--SNI) of the National Council of Science and Technology of Mexico (CONACyT) in 2013.
  • Winner in the Computational Imagery category of the "2011 Kroto Institute Scientific Image Competition". Image entitled "Visualising the Computational Universe: Runtime Space in a Peano Curve", 2011.
  • 3rd Place Prize "Reality: Digital or Analog" Contest 2011, awarded by the Foundational Questions Institute (Essay title: "The World is Either Algorithmic or Mostly Random") announced at the World Science Festival, NYC, 2011.
  • Travel support by the British Society for the Philosophy of Science through the University of Leeds, 2012.
  • Early nominated to the MIT Technology Review (Spanish version) annual list of 35 INNOVATORS UNDER 35, 2012.
    Bourse aux jeunes chercheurs Comité National Français d'Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences, 2011.
  • Ministère de l'Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche (bourse de mobilité aires culturelles), 2007, University of Paris.
  • Association for Symbolic Logic (ASL) Travel Grant Award (CiE 06, Swansea UK)
  • NSF and the New England Complex Institute (NECSI) (ICCS06-Boston, USA)
  • Université de Lille III, Kurt Gödel: The Writings, Maison de la Recherche 2006, Lille, France.
  • Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge University, UK (visiting fellow, Workshop LAAW04, Wolfson Court, Girton College, UK), 2006.
  • Masters and PhD fellowship from CONACYT and the French Ministry of Education worth 60K EUR, 2005-2011.

This video recording was made from the vantage point of the Banana river, 6 miles from the Shuttle platform in a restricted area inside the Kennedy Space Center. The STS-123 was the 25th. flight to the International Space Station (ISS) and delivered a Japanese module and the Canadian Dextre robot.
Video taken by H. Zenil on March 11, 2008 of the Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-123 liftoff!

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