We are pleased to announce that Stephen L. Macknik, PhD, Professor of Ophthalmology, Neurology, and Physiology & Pharmacology at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University / SUNY Downstate Medical Center, has been elected as an Academician of the World Academy of Artificial Consciousness (WAAC), in recognition of his sustained academic contributions to visual neuroscience, visual consciousness, attention mechanisms, visual illusions, microsaccades, neural coding, perceptual stability, eye-movement biomarkers of neurological diseases, and “neuromagic.” SUNY Downstate’s official faculty page identifies Professor Macknik as Professor of Ophthalmology, Neurology, and Physiology & Pharmacology.
Professor Macknik has long been dedicated to research on visual consciousness, attention mechanisms, microsaccades, visual masking, visual illusions, and translational neuroscience. Using methods such as primate electrophysiology, human psychophysics, fMRI, and eye tracking, his work has examined the complex relationship among physical stimuli, neural responses, and subjective visibility, with systematic contributions to backward masking, target visibility, microsaccades and perceptual stability, attentional selection, and the neural mechanisms of magical misdirection. SUNY Downstate’s official page lists representative publications in Nature Neuroscience, PNAS, Neuron, and Nature Reviews Neuroscience, and summarizes his current research areas as including the neurobiology of brightness and flicker perception, abnormal blood flow in neurological and ophthalmic diseases, and attention and cognition in psychiatric disorders.
WAAC believes that the development of artificial consciousness requires not only large-scale artificial intelligence models and engineering systems, but also foundational support from consciousness science, visual neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, active perception, attention mechanisms, and neural computation. Professor Macknik’s work shows that conscious experience is not a static copy of external input, but a dynamic result of the nervous system’s continuous organization of information across time, space, attention, and behavior. His research provides important scientific foundations for artificial consciousness systems to realize active perception, information selection, perceptual stability, attentional control, subjective visibility judgment, and defense against cognitive misdirection. In recognition of his outstanding contributions to visual consciousness, microsaccades and active perception, visual masking, neural mechanisms of attention, neuromagic, cognitive illusions, and clinical eye-movement neuroscience, the World Academy of Artificial Consciousness has elected Professor Stephen L. Macknik as a WAAC Academician.
- 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 Oxford, 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.