LEADERSHIP
Olaf Witkowski, PhD
Director
CONTACTOlaf co-founded ventures in science and technology on three continents. Expert in machine intelligence, cognitive science, and artificial life, he has conducted research at the University of Tokyo, the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He was elected Vice President of the International Society for Artificial Life and co-founded Artificial Life Japan in 2021. He leads research activities at Cross Labs, and is an Executive Officer at Cross Compass.
Alyssa Adams, PhD
Deputy Director
CONTACTAlyssa is a physicist and innovator whose journey spans ten startup ventures and fifteen years of community building. They believe artificial life represents an unparalleled technological paradigm with the power to reshape our future. At Cross Labs, Alyssa empowers the team with resources and freedom to tackle the most profound questions in modern science and technology, while scaling talent and infrastructure to match their ambitions.
Antoine Pasquali, PhD
Innovation Advisor
CONTACTDoctor of cognitive neuroscience and an expert in engineering and automatic control sciences, Antoine has 20 years of experience in deep learning in developmental and industrial robotics, manufacturing, food industry, finance, psychophysics and brain imaging. He currently leads the development of technological innovations at Cross Compass as Board Director and Chief Technology Officer.
Katsunobu Suzuki
Corporate Strategy Lead
CONTACTKatsunobu brings his unique experience in the development of semiconductor chips for industrial applications, having been the first to introduce AI into factory edge devices in Japan with NEC (now Renesas Electronics). Katsunobu graduated from Yokohama City University. As Chief Executive Officer of Cross Compass Ltd., he manages the company's strategy to bridge between cutting-edge research and AI technology at the service of humanity.
STAFF
Jean Alfonso-Decena
Executive Assistant to the Director
Jean co-founded tech startups in Japan and the Philippines and led a Google award-winning conversational AI fintech company in Berkeley, California. Jean is currently an AI consultant for global tech and academic institutions, and the founder of a spirit-tech startup helping humans evolve into radical consciousness.
RESEARCHERS
Luc Caspar, PhD
Lab Manager & Research Scientist
Luc holds a PhD in Affective Science and Machine Learning from the University of Sheffield were his focus was on emotions and their role in the decision-making process. Since joining Cross Labs, Luc's focus has shifted from understanding affect to using the concept for studying the possibility of communication through games.
Martin Biehl, PhD
Senior Research Scientist
Martin's expertise is in Bayesian agents and information theory, focusing on foundations of individuality, goal-directedness and imagination/deliberation inside dynamical systems. He obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Hertfordshire, UK.
Nicholas Gutternberg, PhD
Senior Research Scientist
With a background in computational condensed matter physics and specializing in scaling and the emergence of patterns in complex systems and abstract chemistries with an emphasis on Origins of Life questions, Nicholas is currently developing methods for multi-agent artificial intelligence informed by ideas from physics and complex systems.
Mahdi Khosravy, PhD
Senior Research Scientist
Mahdi is an expert in interdisciplinary intelligent systems, with over a hundred books, book chapters, journal publications, presentations, and technical reports. He has established strong international collaborations with universities and the industry in Europe, USA, Brazil, India, and Japan. His recent work revolves around GANs, model inversion attacks, deep face recognition, and evolutionary optimization.
Javi Fernandez, PhD
Research Scientist
Javier holds a Degree in Industrial Engineering and double Master's Degree from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and Keio University. Javier’s current focus is Affective Computing, Artificial Life, and Artificial Intelligence.
Tanner Lund
Research Scientist
Tanner is a doctoral student at The University of Tokyo and a software industry professional of 8+ years. Among his interests are complex heterogeneous multi-agent systems, risk, uncertainty, music, communication, the features of life and artifice, and most fundamentally: learning.
Q. Tyrell Davis, PhD
Research Scientist
Q Tyrell Davis is a descended primate exhibiting many signs of general intelligence who, among other things, programs computer simulations to explore characteristics and consequences in abstract life-like systems. A senior research scientist at Cross Labs, Tyrell used to build optical microscopes and use them for imaging and manipulating proteins a few tens of nanometers across.
Oneris Rico, PhD
Research Scientist
Oneris contributes to Cross Labs research with his expertise in video content production and cinematography. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Keio in media design.
Benjamin Calvert
Research Assistant
Ben is a PhD student with a background in marine biology. With a deep interest in animal communication, his research focuses on interpreting how animals convey meaning and understanding their perspectives. He aims to quantify these meanings and explore ways to translate them into a form that both machines and humans can interpret, helping bridge the gap between human and animal cognition and fostering new insights into cross-species interaction.
Esin Bahar Akçay
Research Assistant
Esin is a Master’s student in Modeling for Neuronal and Cognitive Systems at Université Côte d'Azur. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Artificial Intelligence from Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. Her scientific interests revolve around neurocognition, mathematical modeling of large-scale brain dynamics as well as utilizing computational tools to understand intelligence, emotions and consciousness.
EXTERNAL MEMBERS
Nathanael Aubert-Kato, PhD
External Member
Nathanael is a lecturer at the Ochanomizu University, Japan, and received his PhD in Information Sciences and Technology from the University of Tokyo. Nathanael's research interests cover molecular robotics, evolutionary optimization algorithms, and Alife.
Hector Zenil, PhD
External Member
Hector leads the Algorithmic Dynamics Lab at the Karolinska Institute, and is a Senior Researcher at the Alan Turing Institute at the British Library in London. Hector has published over 120 papers and several books, including "A Computable Universe" and "Algorithmic Information Dynamics."
Joe Austerweil, PhD
External Member
Joseph is a cognitive psychologist and machine learning researcher. He has multiple publications in Psychological Review and Trends in Cognitive Sciences and NeurIPS. Since 2013, he's been a professor at Brown University and University of Wisconsin-Madison as an Associate Professor of Psychology and Computer Science. In June 2025, he joined the Henkaku Center as a senior researcher and Chiba Institute of Technology as a co-founding faculty member for the new School of Design and Science.
Eliott Jacopin, PhD
External Member
Eliott holds a Ph.D. in systems biology from Osaka University. He is interested in characterizing living systems and investigates the subject from the angle of both formal frameworks and simulations.
Praful Gagrani, PhD
External Member
A postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison in the Origins of Life group, where he also received his Ph.D. in Physics, Praful has a master’s in physics with a specialization in cosmology from Kansas State University. Praful's research focus is on the application of mathematics and mathematical physics towards building specific techniques for understanding various aspects of complex systems.
Keisuke Suzuki, PhD
External Member
Keisuke's key research focus is conscious presence; i.e. the subjective feeling of being "here and now". His approach builds on state-of-the-art virtual reality to experimentally manipulate the bodily and mental states of mind, which is complimented by theoretical modeling. Keisuke is a specially appointed lecturer at the Center for Human Nature, Artificial Intelligence, and Neuroscience (CHAIN) in Hokkaido University, Japan.
ADVISORS
Prof. Takashi Ikegami
Professor, University of Tokyo
Professor at the Department of General System Studies at the University of Tokyo, Prof. Ikegami’s work encompasses both the arts and sciences, with a focus on complex systems and Artificial Life, a field which aims to build a possible form of life using computer simulations, chemical experiments and robots.
Prof. Michael Levin
Professor, Tufts University
Distinguished Professor at Tufts University, Michael Levin’s areas of interest are Morphological and behavioral information processing in living systems. He’s also the director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University and Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology. He is also co-director of the Institute for Computationally Designed Organisms.
Prof. Daniel Polani
Director, Centre for Computer Science and Informatics Research
Daniel Polani is a professor of Artificial Intelligence and Director of the Centre for Computer Science and Informatics Research, and Head of the Adaptive Systems Research Group, and leader of the SEPIA Lab at the University of Hertfordshire.
Prof. Hiroki Sayama
Director, Center for Collective Dynamics of Complex Systems
Professor at Binghamton University, Hiroki Sayama is a researcher who has an extensive experience in teaching and research on complex systems science and engineering, network science, computational social science, mathematical modeling and simulation, artificial life/chemistry, and computer and information sciences.
ALUMNI
Kaan Akinci
Mercari
Payton Bechefsky
UCLA
Grant Cheng
UCLA
Chris Hoang
NYU
Kevin Frans
MIT
Samuel Kiegeland
ETH Zürich
Sina Khajehabdollahi
Max Planck Institute
John Kong
University of Queensland
Jadon Nguyen
UCLA
Peter Nguyen
UCLA
Pranav Pudu
University of Texas
Gueren Sanford
Texas Tech University
Christopher Senn
Tokyo Institute of Technology
Elena Tapia
IBM, Zurich
Oliver Wang
UCLA
William Yang
Cambridge University
Byran You
University of Tokyo
FRIENDS & COMMUNITY
Claus Aranha
University of Tsukuba
Douglas Blackiston
Tufts University
Bert Chan
Independent Researcher
Wesley Chan
Monash University
Axel Cleeremans
Université Libre de Bruxelles
Antoine Cully
Imperial College London
Aleksandr Drozd
RIKEN CCS
Bill Duane
Former Google Executive
Chrisantha Fernando
DeepMind
Eduard Fosch-Villaronga
eLaw Center for Law and Digital Technologies
Rudolf Füchslin
Zurich University
Mario Galarreta
Stanford University
Neeraj Gupta
Oakland University
David Ha
Google Brain
Takuya Ibaraki
Neuro Innovation Unit, NTT
Hiroyuki Iizuka
Hokkaido University
Ryota Kanai
Araya
Sam Kriegman
Harvard University
Joel Lehman
Carper.ai
Grace Lindsay
University College London
Michael Muthukrishna
London School of Economics
Yukie Nagai
University of Tokyo
Anh-Thu (Kayde) Nguyen
Ritsumeikan University
Stefanos Nikolaidis
University of Southern California
Geoff Nitschke
University of Cape Town
Ken Regan
University at Buffalo
Sebastian Risi
IT University of Copenhagen
Lana Sinapayen
Sony CSL
Liza Solomonova
McGill University
Michael Spranger
Sony AI
Eric Schwitzgebel
University of California
Tim Taylor
Monash University
Julian Togelius
New York University
