We are pleased to announce that Professor Nicholas G. Hatsopoulos—Professor in the Department of Organismal Biology & Anatomy at The University of Chicago and a core member of the interdisciplinary programs in Neuroscience and Computational Neuroscience—has been elected as an Academician of the World Academy for Artificial Consciousness (WAAC) for his outstanding contributions to motor cortex coding, population neurocomputation, and brain–computer interfaces (BCIs).
Professor Hatsopoulos has long been devoted to uncovering how the motor cortex encodes and generates movement. His team proposed and validated the “movement fragments”/preferred-trajectory coding view: individual motor-cortex neurons exhibit selectivity for time-evolving movement trajectories rather than merely tuning to instantaneous kinematic parameters, helping drive a paradigm shift from “static tuning” to “temporal trajectory” frameworks. In BCIs and neuroprosthetics, his group has significantly enhanced device stability and usability through closed-loop sensory feedback and population-activity decoding, with multiple University of Chicago news and research reports demonstrating how tactile/proprioceptive feedback improves performance and its potential for clinical translation.
- Global Collaboration and Academic Ecosystem
Academicians of the World Academy for Artificial Consciousness hail from institutions such as Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Cambridge, the University of California, the French Academy of Sciences, the University of Padua, the University of Queensland, Columbia University, and the University of Exeter. Honorary Academicians come from a wide range of countries and regions, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Canada, Australia, Spain, and China. In addition, leading scientists from prominent research institutes and technology companies—such as Google, the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and ZEEKR—also participate.
- About WAAC
The World Academy for Artificial Consciousness (https://www.waac.ac/) is a global academic institution established in Paris in 2025. Its mission is to advance frontier research and international collaboration in artificial consciousness through the integration of science, technology, and philosophy. The Academy publishes open research, policy recommendations, evaluation standards, and more. The current President is Academician Yucong Duan, and the Secretary-General is Dr. Yingbo Li. The Honorary Academician List: On May 3, 2025, WAAC released its first batch of Top 100 Honorary Academicians, recognizing scholars who have made foundational or leading contributions to the theory of artificial consciousness.