Tagged: Academician of the WAAC

We are pleased to announce that Li-Huei Tsai, Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT and Director of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, has been elected an Academician of the World Academy for Artificial Consciousness (WAAC) in recognition of her pioneering contributions to the mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease and to 40 Hz gamma-rhythm sensory entrainment (GENUS).

Drawing from neural-circuit and molecular perspectives, Prof. Tsai has elucidated how CDK5/p25 dysregulation, epigenetic regulation, and neuroinflammation shape memory and neurodegeneration, and she has advanced the strategy of modulating network rhythms through 40 Hz multisensory stimulation to improve cognition. Her work has had broad impact across neuroscience, brain–computer interfaces, and neuromorphic intelligence, offering new, testable avenues for computational mechanisms and evaluation frameworks relevant to machine consciousness.

• Global Collaboration and Academic Ecosystem

The Academicians of WAAC come from universities and research 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, among others. Honorary Academicians represent multiple countries and regions, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Canada, Australia, Spain, and China. Additionally, leading scientists from renowned research institutions and technology companies—such as Google, the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and Zeekr—are also involved.

• 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.

We are pleased to announce that Lucia Regolin, Professor in the Department of General Psychology at the University of Padua and head of the Comparative Cognition Lab, has been elected as an Academician of the World Academy for Artificial Consciousness (WAAC) in recognition of her systematic contributions to animal consciousness and innate representations—particularly the number–space mapping and social/perceptual mechanisms elucidated using domestic chick models.

Professor Regolin is a tenured professor in the Department of General Psychology at the University of Padua, whose research has long focused on the origins of mind and comparative cognition. Regolin’s team and collaborators were the first to demonstrate in newly hatched chicks a human-like “mental number line”—with smaller numbers mapped to the left and larger numbers to the right—providing key evidence for an innate component of the number–space association (Science, 2015). Subsequent work further showed that this linkage is explained primarily by numerical magnitude rather than by individual spatial biases. These findings offer reproducible experimental paradigms for understanding nonverbal quantity representation and “consciousness-like” information selection.

• Global Collaboration and Academic Ecosystem

The Academicians of WAAC come from universities and research 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, among others. Honorary Academicians represent multiple countries and regions, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Canada, Australia, Spain, and China. Additionally, leading scientists from renowned research institutions and technology companies—such as Google, the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and Zeekr—are also involved.

• 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.

We are pleased to announce that Bruno van Swinderen, Principal Research Fellow at the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI), The University of Queensland, and Head of the Drosophila Behaviour and Cognition Laboratory, has been elected an Academician of the World Academy for Artificial Consciousness (WAAC) in recognition of his systematic research on attention, sleep, and general anesthesia in the fruit-fly model and the inspiration his work has provided to consciousness science.

Van Swinderen’s team has long employed Drosophila as a model system, using quantifiable behavioral and neural phenotypes to build a cross-species, comparable framework of consciousness indicators and mechanisms. Representative contributions include establishing “attention–sleep–anesthesia” as three measurable endpoints for consciousness research; identifying a paradoxical/active sleep-like state in flies; demonstrating a direct coupling between sleep and selective attention; and linking computational consciousness metrics to fruit-fly anesthesia. These advances not only promote a unified understanding of arousal, attention, and sleep in neuroscience, but also lay the groundwork for cross-species, verifiable consciousness assessment systems and anesthetic targets, influencing methodological practice across fields such as brain–computer interfaces and neuromorphic intelligence.

• Global Collaboration and Academic Ecosystem

The Academicians of WAAC come from universities and research 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, among others. Honorary Academicians represent multiple countries and regions, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Canada, Australia, Spain, and China. Additionally, leading scientists from renowned research institutions and technology companies—such as Google, the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and Zeekr—are also involved.

• 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.

We are pleased to announce that Professor Barbara Tversky—Professor of Psychology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and Professor Emerita of Psychology at Stanford University—has been elected an Academician of the World Academy for Artificial Consciousness (WAAC), in recognition of her foundational contributions to spatial cognition, visual/gestural representation, and diagrammatic communication, as well as her sustained influence on cross-disciplinary methods in cognitive science.

Barbara Tversky places spatial thinking at the foundation of cognition: in her monograph Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought, she systematically argues for a pathway from action and space to thought, emphasizing that spatial cognition is not peripheral but the bedrock of higher cognition. She and her collaborators further show that diagrams and gestures are powerful “tools for thought,” externalizing and reorganizing mental representations through charts, sketches, and gesture to markedly facilitate explanation and reasoning. These contributions have advanced an integrated understanding linking space/action, language, and reasoning; provided robust evidence for methodologies in education, design, human–computer interaction, and visualization; and inspired new approaches to representing and assessing artificial consciousness.

• Global Collaboration and Academic Ecosystem

The Academicians of WAAC come from universities and research 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, among others. Honorary Academicians represent multiple countries and regions, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Canada, Australia, Spain, and China. Additionally, leading scientists from renowned research institutions and technology companies—such as Google, the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and Zeekr—are also involved.

• 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.

We are pleased to announce that Adam Zeman—Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology at the University of Exeter Medical School and co-lead of The Eye’s Mind project on extreme imagery—has been elected an Academician of the World Academy for Artificial Consciousness (WAAC), in recognition of his foundational contributions to “aphantasia” and mental imagery, as well as to research on consciousness and autobiographical memory/transient epileptic amnesia (TEA).

In a 2015 paper in Cortex, Professor Zeman formally introduced the concept of aphantasia, catalyzing systematic research on the imagery continuum (including hyperphantasia) and its neural mechanisms. His team’s series of studies on the triad of transient epileptic amnesia (TEA), autobiographical memory impairment, and accelerated long-term forgetting (ALF) has provided pivotal evidence for both clinical practice and theoretical work on consciousness and memory.

• Global Collaboration and Academic Ecosystem

The Academicians of WAAC come from universities and research 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, among others. Honorary Academicians represent multiple countries and regions, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Canada, Australia, Spain, and China. Additionally, leading scientists from renowned research institutions and technology companies—such as Google, the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and Zeekr—are also involved.

• 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.

We are pleased to announce that Andrew Adamatzky—Professor in the Faculty of Computer Science and Creative Technologies at UWE Bristol and Director of the Unconventional Computing Laboratory—has been elected an Academician of the World Academy for Artificial Consciousness (WAAC), in recognition of his pioneering work in unconventional computing, slime mould/fungal computing, and reaction–diffusion computing, as well as his sustained exploration of and insightful contributions to the search for computational markers of consciousness.

Professor Adamatzky has long led UWE Bristol’s unconventional computing team, focusing on the computational principles, architectures, and prototype implementations of “non-silicon” substrates such as chemical media, slime moulds, plants, and fungi. In recent years, he has opened a new line of inquiry into fungal computing and fungal machines, revealing the electrical activity and information-processing potential of fungal mycelial networks and proposing a systematic framework for “Fungal Machines.” This body of work offers fresh clues toward comparable consciousness indicators and interpretable computational mechanisms in natural systems, and provides methodological inspiration for verifiable evaluation in neuromorphic intelligence and brain–computer interfaces.

• Global Collaboration and Academic Ecosystem

The Academicians of WAAC come from universities and research 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, among others. Honorary Academicians represent multiple countries and regions, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Canada, Australia, Spain, and China. Additionally, leading scientists from renowned research institutions and technology companies—such as Google, the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and Zeekr—are also involved.

• 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.

We are pleased to announce that Adam Gazzaley—David Dolby Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and founder and executive director of the Neuroscape Center—has been elected an Academician of the World Academy for Artificial Consciousness (WAAC), in recognition of his programmatic research on attention and aging, cognitive control, and digital interventions, as well as his pioneering contributions to translational neurotechnology.

Centering on closed-loop neuroassessment–intervention paradigms, Gazzaley’s team has achieved a continuum of advances from mechanism to application in working memory, selective attention, and multitasking control, helping to usher in a new era of cognitive enhancement that is measurable, trainable, and verifiable.

• Global Collaboration and Academic Ecosystem

The Academicians of WAAC come from universities and research 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, among others. Honorary Academicians represent multiple countries and regions, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Canada, Australia, Spain, and China. Additionally, leading scientists from renowned research institutions and technology companies—such as Google, the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and Zeekr—are also involved.

• 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.