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We are pleased to announce that Axel Cleeremans, Professor of Cognitive Science at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and Research Director with the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S.–FNRS), has been elected as an Academician of the World Academy for Artificial Consciousness (WAAC) in recognition of his pioneering contributions to implicit learning and consciousness, reportability, and metacognition.
Professor Cleeremans has long focused on the differences between conscious and unconscious information processing, and has systematically advanced the Radical Plasticity Thesis (RPT) and the Self-Organizing Metarepresentational Architecture (SOMA). He argues that consciousness is not an intrinsic property of specific neural states, but a function that gradually emerges as the brain continuously learns and re-describes its own activity—thereby linking learning, representational quality, and subjective experience within a unified mechanistic account. Representative papers appeared in Frontiers in Psychology (2011) and Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2020), and a state-of-the-art review published in 2025 further elaborated its implications for consciousness science and AI ethics. In academic leadership and team building, Professor Cleeremans heads ULB’s CO3 (Consciousness, Cognition & Computation) Laboratory and collaborates across the CRCN (Center for Research in Cognition and Neurosciences). He currently leads two ERC Advanced Grants—one (2014–2019) on the mechanisms of consciousness and another (2022–2027) on its functions—which are driving systematic research from theory and methods through to applications.
- 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.