Senior Fellows

EXISTENTIAL HOPE TRACK - I’m a theoretical physicist at Stanford, interested in early universe cosmology, inflation, black holes, and assorted other topics. My academic papers can be found on the arXiv: http://arxiv.org/find/hep-th/1/au:+Brown_A/0/1/0/all/0/1

AGI BENEFICENCE - Richard is Director of AI Projects at emerging technology beneficence nonprofit Future of Life Institute, aiming to keep AI robust and beneficial to humankind. He is also an advisor to other startups, nonprofits/NGOs, and the public sector globally, where he advises on AI, AI safety, AI policy, AI ethics, knowledge management, and sustainability. He has over twenty years experience in AI algorithms development, product team management, CTO-level roles, and strategy advisory. Richard holds a degree in computer science with a specialization in intelligent systems from Columbia University.

CHEMICAL COMPUTING - Lee Cronin was born in the UK and was fascinated with science and technology from an early age getting his first computer and chemistry set when he was 8 years old. This is when he first started thinking about programming chemistry and looking for inorganic aliens. He went to the University of York where he completed both a degree and PhD in Chemistry and then on to do post docs in Edinburgh and Germany before becoming a lecturer at the Universities of Birmingham, and then Glasgow where he has been since 2002 working up the ranks to become the Regius Professor of Chemistry in 2013 aged 39. He has one of the largest multidisciplinary chemistry-based research teams in the world, having raised over $35 M in grants and current income of $15 M. He has given over 300 international talks and has authored over 350 peer reviewed papers with recent work published in Nature, Science, and PNAS. He and his team are trying to make artificial life forms, find alien life, explore the digitization of chemistry, understand how information can be encoded into chemicals and construct chemical computers.

LONGEVITY INVESTING & DATA ANALYSIS - Karl Pfleger, PhD (Stanford CS, Machine Learning) now focuses on aging & longevity after a successful tech career (mySimon, Google). A long-time donor to the Buck Institute and SENS Foundation, he is also an angel investor who has backed over 15 aging-related startups. He is the creator of AgingBiotech.info, a free public resource to track the commercialization progress of the aging biotech sector and related information.

ARTIFICIAL MOLECULAR MACHINES - David Leigh is a scientist who designs and synthesises artificial molecular motors and machines from first principles. He has made a number of notable contributions to the field, including the use of light-sensitive molecules to make small droplets of liquid move uphill. David also developed a tiny molecular machine that mirrors the function of the ribosome, the protein factory of our cells. His pioneering work has significantly improved the future of nanotechnology, opening up a world of possibilities for the development of new materials. These include different types of plastics, novel types of catalysts and pharmaceuticals, for example. David has received a number of major international awards for his research, including the 2007 Izatt–Christensen Award for Macrocyclic Chemistry, the 2007 EU Descartes Prize and the 2007 Feynman Prize for Nanotechnology. He has also received seven Royal Society of Chemistry awards.

CRYPTOGRAPHY - Zooko Wilcox is the founder and CEO of the Electric Coin Company. He is one of the original cypherpunks. Zooko is a long-serving technologist and entrepreneur. His experience spans open, decentralized systems; cryptography; information security; and startups. In more than 25 years in the industry, Zooko has contributed to an array of projects — many of which champion privacy implementations — including DigiCash, Mojo Nation, ZRTP, “Zooko’s Triangle,” Tahoe-LAFS, BLAKE2 and SPHINCS. He is the founder of the Electric Coin Company and Least Authority Enterprises, which uniquely empower individuals with the right to consent about how, when and to whom their personal data is shared. Zooko is on the advisory board at Bolt Labs, Tezos and Brave. He serves on the board of directors for Agoric. He tweets often, about a range of topics. He used to blog about health science, as well.

CONSTRUCTOR THEORY - Chiara Marletto is a Research Fellow working at the Physics Department, University of Oxford. Within Wolfson, she is an active member of the Quantum Cluster and of the New Frontiers Quantum Hub. Her research is in theoretical physics, with special emphasis on Quantum Theory of Computation, Information Theory, Thermodynamics, Condensed-Matter Physics and Quantum Biology. Some of her recent research has harnessed a recently proposed generalisation of the quantum theory of information – Constructor Theory — to address issues at the foundations of the theory of control and causation in physics. These include applications to defining general principles encompassing classical, quantum and post-quantum theories of information; and to assessing the compatibility of essential features of living systems, such as the ability to self-reproduce and evolve, with fundamental laws of Physics, in particular with Quantum Physics. They also include the definition of a new class of witnesses of non-classicality in systems that need not obey quantum theory, such as gravity; and a scale-independent definition of irreversibility, work and heat, based on constructor-theoretic ideas. Chiara is also writing a popular book inspired by her research, “The Science of Can and Can’t”, forthcoming for Penguin.

HEALTH EXTENSION - Morgan Levine is a ladder-rank Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology at the Yale School of Medicine and a member of both the Yale Combined Program in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, and the Yale Center for Research on Aging. Her work relies on an interdisciplinary approach, integrating theories and methods from statistical genetics, computational biology, and mathematical demography to develop biomarkers of aging for humans and animal models using high-dimensional omics data. As PI or co-Investigator on multiple NIH-, Foundation-, and University-funded projects, she has extensive experience using systems-level and machine learning approaches to track epigenetic, transcriptomic, and proteomic changes with aging and incorporate this information to develop measures of risk stratification for major chronic diseases, such as cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. Her work also involves development of systems-level outcome measures of aging, aimed at facilitating evaluation for geroprotective interventions. A number of the existing biological aging measures she has developed are being applied in both basic and observational research.

PREDICTION MARKETS - Robin Hanson is associate professor of economics at George Mason University, and research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. He has a doctorate in social science from California Institute of Technology, master’s degrees in physics and philosophy from the University of Chicago, and nine years experience as a research programmer, at Lockheed and NASA. Professor Hanson has 4510 citations, a citation h-index of 33, and over ninety academic publications, including in Algorithmica, Applied Optics, Communications of the ACM, Economics Letters, Economica, Econometrica, Economics of Governance, Foundations of Physics, IEEE Intelligent Systems, Information Systems Frontiers, Innovations, International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Evolution and Technology, Journal of Law Economics and Policy, Journal of Political Philosophy, Journal of Prediction Markets, Journal of Public Economics, Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods, Medical Hypotheses, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Public Choice, Science, Social Epistemology, Social Philosophy and Policy, and Theory and Decision. Oxford University Press published his book The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life When Robots Rule the Earth in June 2016, and his book The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life, co-authored with Kevin Simler, in January, 2018. Professor Hanson has 1007 media mentions, given 370 invited talks, and his blog OvercomingBias.com has had eight million visits. Professor Hanson has pioneered prediction markets, also known as information markets and idea futures, since 1988. He was the first to write in detail about creating and subsidizing markets to gain better estimates on a wide variety of important topics. He was a principal architect of the first internal corporate markets, at Xanadu in 1990, of the first web markets, the Foresight Exchange since 1994, of DARPA’s Policy Analysis Market, from 2001 to 2003, and of IARPA’s combinatorial markets DAGGRE and SCICAST from 2010 to 2015. Professor Hanson developed new technologies for conditional, combinatorial, and intermediated trading, and studied insider trading, manipulation, and other foul play. He has written and spoken widely on the application of idea futures to business and policy, and has advised many ventures. He suggests “futarchy”, a form of governance based on prediction markets. Robin has diverse research interests, with papers on spatial product competition, health incentive contracts, group insurance, product bans, evolutionary psychology and bioethics of health care, voter information incentives, incentives to fake expertise, Bayesian classification, agreeing to disagree, self-deception in disagreement, probability elicitation, wiretaps, image reconstruction, the history of science prizes, reversible computation, the origin of life, the survival of humanity, very long term economic growth, growth given machine intelligence, and interstellar colonization. He coined the phrase “The Great Filter” to analyze why the universe looks so dead.

CRYOPRESERVATION - -Designed and led the TRIIM trial; Published the first report of thymus regeneration in a normal human; Granted patents on methods for and applications of human thymus regeneration –Fellow of the American Aging Association (since 2005), Former Director of the American Aging Association (16 years) –Editor-in-Chief, The Future of Aging: Pathways to Human Life Extension –Awarded the Society for Cryobiology’s Luyet Medal in 2016 –In 2009, showed indefinite survival of rabbit kidney transplanted after cooling to -130° Celsius; Led 21CM team as co-winner of Small Mammal Brain Preservation Prize, 2018 winner of Large Mammal Brain Preservation Prize

COMPUTATION - Mark S. Miller, Chief Scientist at Agoric, is a pioneer of agoric (market-based secure distributed) computing and smart contracts, the main designer of the E and Dr. SES distributed persistent object-capability programming languages, inventor of Miller Columns, an architect of the Xanadu hypertext publishing system, a representative to the EcmaScript committee, a former Google research scientist and member of the WebAssembly (Wasm) group.

CHEMISTRY - Dr. Edelstein is a Non-executive board member for Agua Via Ltd., serving as science advisor to the board. He is a founding member and CTO of Covalent Industrial Technologies, LLC which develops bottom-up nanotechnology-based products for environmental and medical markets. Prior to founding Covalent Martin was Director of Analytical Development at Athena Neurosciences and had a lengthy career in drug development. Martin obtained his Ph.D. at Texas A&M University in the laboratories of F.A. Cotton and E.E. Hazen Jr in the design and synthesis of protein super secondary structures. He then had a postdoctoral fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine in the laboratory of Antonio Gotto developing isotopic syntheses and performing structural NMR on labeled, synthetic apolipoproteins. Martin has experience in organic, inorganic, analytical and biophysical chemistry. When he was a starving postdoctoral fellow he developed a software consulting business which focused on real-time control of instrumentation and analysis of analytical data. In his industrial career, he participated in the development phase of moving products to the market and participated in international regulatory filings. Seven key patents and several papers resulted from early work at Covalent on organic single atomic layer membranes. Organic chemistry providing the means to implement a bottom-up nanotechnology building block strategy. He is Principle Investigator on a DOE small business grant obtained in 2015 to initiate novel manufacturing methods for the production of single atomic layer membranes.

POLICY - Christine Peterson is Co-founder and former President of Foresight Institute. She lectures and writes about nanotechnology, AI, and longevity. She is co-author of Unbounding the Future: the Nanotechnology Revolution (Morrow, also free online) and Leaping the Abyss: Putting Group Genius to Work (knOwhere Press, also free online). She advises the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, Global Healthspan Policy Institute, National Space Society, startup Ligandal, and the Voice & Exit conference. She coined the term ‘open source software.’ She holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from MIT.

POLITICAL SCIENCE - Samo Burja is the Founder and President of Bismarck Analysis, a political risk consulting firm based in San Francisco that specializes in institutional analysis for clients in North America and Europe. Bismarck uses the foundational sociological research that Samo and his team have conducted over the past decade to deliver unique insights to clients about institutional design and strategy. Samo’s studies focus on the social and material technologies that provide the foundation for healthy human societies, with an eye to engineering and restoring the structures that produce functional institutions. He has authored articles and papers on his findings. His manuscript, Great Founder Theory, is available online. Samo has spoken about his findings at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Y Combinator’s YC 120 conference, the Reboot American Innovation conference in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. He spends most of his time in California and his native Slovenia.

PHILOSOPHY - Anders Sandberg has a background in computer science and neuroscience, but is since 2006 a member of the Faculty of Philosophy at University of Oxford. There, at the Future of Humanity Institute, he investigates management of low-probability high-impact risks, estimating the capabilities of future technologies, and very long-range futures. He is also senior research fellow at the Oxford Martin School, research associate to the the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, the Institute of Future Studies (Stockholm), and the Center for the Study of Bioethics (Belgrade).

APPLIED PHYSICS - Since 2015 Creon has worked at Planet Labs, where he is the Chief Technologist, Director or R&D, and a Planet Fellow. Prior to that, he worked at NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, where he was one of the founders of the NAS (NASA Advanced Supercomputing) division, co-PI on the Virtual Wind Tunnel project, co-founder of the NASA Molecular Nanotechnology Group (the first federally funded research lab devoted to molecular nanotechnology), co-PI on the hyperwall project, investigator on the Columbia accident investigation board, member of the NASA engineering and safety center, investigator on the millimeter-wave thermal rocket project, the Stardust re-entry observation campaign, PI on the LighForce project, special assistant to the center director, and chief scientist for the programs and projects directorate. From 1999 to 2001 Creon was director of the International Space Sciences Organization – a privately funded R&D organization with about 15 full-time employees investigating and funding breakthrough technologies for space propulsion and energy production. Creon is the author of numerous papers, book chapters, and software packages. He serves on the advisory boards of several aerospace and biotechnology companies and has served on numerous NSF, DARPA, and NASA committees including (from 2010 to the present) on the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC). He is the recipient of many awards and prizes including the 1997 Richard P. Feynman Award for Molecular Nanotechnology and he is a senior research fellow at the Foresight Institute.

NANOTECHNOLOGY - Dr. Meagley is presently CEO, CTO and resident “Mad Scientist” at ONE Nanotechnologies, a company founded to invent, develop and market photonic nanodevices and device arrays for biomarker characterization and related technology. Prior to forming ONE Nanotechnologies and following post-doctoral research at UC-Berkeley and Cornell, Rob was Principle Investigator, Senior Staff Scientist, and the Molecules for Advanced Patterning Program Manager for Intel. In 2004 he was named Researcher-In Residence for a group he created at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs to discover, develop and commercialize advanced lithography materials. With over 38 papers, 41 patents, and numerous awards to his name, Rob is an expert in the design and synthesis of small molecules and complex molecular systems. In addition to managing several complex, interdisciplinary teams and research programs, he has also lectured extensively on materials science chemistry and nanotechnology, and provides consulting services to the nanotechnology, MEMS and biotechnology communities.

Brad Templeton is currently chair of Computing & Networks at Singularity University, and Chairman Emeritus and futurist of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the leading cyberspace civil rights foundation. He advised Google’s team developing self-driving cars, and writes about such cars at robocars.com. He also advises Starship on delivery robots and Quanergy in the LIDAR space. He founded ClariNet Communications Corp (the world’s first “dot-com” company.) He also created and publishes rec.humor.funny, and its website, www.netfunny.com, the world’s longest running blog.

Clarice D. Aiello is a quantum engineer interested in how quantum physics informs biology at the nanoscale. She is an expert on nanosensors harnessing room-temperature quantum effects in noisy environments.