ABOUT ME
Work & Research
- I am a co-founder and current President of the Active Inference Institute, an educational non-profit dedicated to learning and applying Active Inference.
- With COGSEC I am working on topics related to cognitive security, education, and knowledge management.
- Previously, I have collaborated in areas including applied Complexity (Complexity Adventures), remote work (Remotor Consulting Group) and predictive modeling (FM Analytics).
- From 2020-2023 I was a postdoctoral human in Davis, California, working with Prof. Brian Johnson (UC Davis) and Prof. Tim Linksvayer (Arizona State University). Our research was related to behavior, distributed physiology, and evolutionary genomics in insects (especially ants and bees).
- From 2014-2019 I did my Ph.D. in Biology at Stanford University, on behavior, neurophysiology, and ecology in red harvester ants with Prof. Deborah Gordon.
- While an undergraduate at UC Davis from 2010-2014, I worked on developmental genetics in flies with Prof. Artyom Kopp.
- All of my research can be found and download here.
Art
I am fascinated by visual patterns. All of my drawings are freehand with ink on paper. Most drawing occurred during classes in high school and college (thank you, patient teachers), and later in livestreams. From ~2008 till 11/2014 I only did black & white. Since 11/2014 I began adding more colors (mainly red), letters/words, and abstractions.
Drawn images offer a unique glimpse into the dynamics of perception, revealed through the trace of inky action. Though each pixel on the page can be intellectually understood to be binary, static, and flat -- drawings are living kaleidoscopes: rhythmic, symbolic, and meaningful. Local interactions (between adjacent pixels in a drawing) are much like local interactions between ants: no pairwise interaction can be understood, except in the context of the entire drawing (or colony, or ecosystem, as it were).
I am also a contributing artist on the NFT art collection known as Curio Cards (drawing the art for cards 24, 25, 26). This art collection was built and is the first collectible art show series on the Ethereum blockchain. This historic collection has been sold at auction houses such as Christie's & Sotheby's.
In August 2018, Alexandra & I co-authored a publication entitled: "Partner Pen Play in Parallel (PPPiP): A New PPPiParadigm for Relationship Improvement". The paper is about partner drawing, from the context of evolutionary neuroscience, improvisational aesthetics, and relationship therapy.
In January 2021 I did an interview for the RosyBVM blog, on topics such as art, science, patriotism, and participation.
Go to my Flickr page to see my whole art portfolio
Drawn images offer a unique glimpse into the dynamics of perception, revealed through the trace of inky action. Though each pixel on the page can be intellectually understood to be binary, static, and flat -- drawings are living kaleidoscopes: rhythmic, symbolic, and meaningful. Local interactions (between adjacent pixels in a drawing) are much like local interactions between ants: no pairwise interaction can be understood, except in the context of the entire drawing (or colony, or ecosystem, as it were).
I am also a contributing artist on the NFT art collection known as Curio Cards (drawing the art for cards 24, 25, 26). This art collection was built and is the first collectible art show series on the Ethereum blockchain. This historic collection has been sold at auction houses such as Christie's & Sotheby's.
In August 2018, Alexandra & I co-authored a publication entitled: "Partner Pen Play in Parallel (PPPiP): A New PPPiParadigm for Relationship Improvement". The paper is about partner drawing, from the context of evolutionary neuroscience, improvisational aesthetics, and relationship therapy.
In January 2021 I did an interview for the RosyBVM blog, on topics such as art, science, patriotism, and participation.
Go to my Flickr page to see my whole art portfolio