Dr. Hector Zenil

Biography

Hector Zenil co-leads the Algorithmic Dynamics Lab at King's College London, a joint lab with the Karolinska Institute. His research lies at the intersection of information theory, complexity science, and causal artificial intelligence in biomedical engineering to understand living systems and transitions from health to disease. He introduced the field of Algorithmic Information Dynamics and has developed a symbolic regression program synthesis framework based on optimal inference theory, which combines classical algorithmic information theories with causal inference and perturbation analysis to tackle inverse problems. Prior to joining KCL, he was part of the Machine Learning Group at the University of Cambridge's Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, and also a senior researcher at the University of Oxford's Department of Computer Science. He served as an independent AI scientific advisor at the Alan Turing Institute and has received the prestigious VR Young Researcher Award. Holding PhDs in Computer Science, Logic, and Epistemology from Paris 1 Sorbonne and Lille 1 in France, Dr. Zenil has held postdoctoral positions and has been an invited scholar and professor at several leading institutions, including MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and KAUST. His research interests include bio-techno-signatures, dynamics of health and disease, and the application of complexity sciences in fundamental science, especially in areas related to optimal inference and artificial superintelligence. Dr. Zenil is also affiliated with the King's Institute of Artificial Intelligence and serves as an associate researcher in the cancer group at the Francis Crick Institute, and he is a trustee of the British Society for Research on Ageing.

Research Interests