Lana Sinapayen
About
Artficial Life - Artificial Intelligence - Open Science
These days I am especially interested in replicating evolution (of biological or cultural systems), looking for life in the universe, and supporting local traditions using tech. I am still working on ways to improve open science sharing/publishing/open collaboration. My dog talks.
#Astrobiology #OpenEndedEvolution #CellularAutomata #OpenCollaboration
What am I working on?
Self-replication and Exponential Mutation in Neural Cellular Automata
Cellular automata are these litte programs that look like moving patterns on a grid. Recently, several advances have brought those automata from the famous black and white grids to full on interactive, sometimes continuous graphics. I wrote about making the patterns self-replicate and trying to make them gain more diverse mutations.
Artificial Perception
I research visual illusions in neural networks, biological and artificial, on the principle that systems that “fail” as the brain does teach us more than systems that superficially succeed as humans do. I am not so much interested in perfect artificial vision as I am interested in charmingly and accurately faulty artficial perception.
Motion illusions produced by my evolutionary generator:
Astrobiology: looking for life in the universe
I work on measures of complexity and measures of “life”. How could you detect life on faraway planets (arxiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.03699)? What kind of data and how much of it do you need to make a reasonable assumption about whether a system is alive or not?
Innovative Science Publishing
I am building a platform for better science.
Lately I have been thinking of pivoting to content augmentation based on fediverse posts (https://lanasina.github.io/FederatedMimosa/) and playing with Myst formatting (demo below).
Who am I?
I am a French researcher living in Kyoto with my dog. I research the principles of the evoluton of life, learning, predictive systems, and Artificial Perception. I give talks on Artificial Life, Open Ended Evolution, Purposeful Failure, and Predictive Coding.
I am interested in changing science culture and sanitizing science practices (read about Mimosa Open Collaboration here, and contact me to access the beta). Find my Artificial Life talks here, for general audiences or more specific communities.
I am an associate researcher (and founding member) of Sony Computer Science Labs’ new Kyoto Lab and an associate professor at the National Institute for Basic Biology in Japan. I am also the Research Chair of the International Society for ALife’s board of directors, a member of ISAL’s DEI committee, and a member of eLife (not related to ALife!) Early Career Advisory Group.
You can read about my career path on my CV (2023) (tl;dr: I went to Engineering School in France then moved to Japan where I got my Master’s and PhD. I used to speak ~9 languages and can do just about anything that involves programming. Sometimes I get awards for scientific work or non scientific work. My favorite scientist is Frans De Waal. I like food.)
Follow me
Message me on Twitter @sina_lana if it hasn’t collapsed; otherwise find me on Bluesky or Mastodon. Keep up with the ALife community through the newsletter (every 2 months) or the ALife Papers twitter account.
Read me
I wrote about changing science publishing through the collaborative open science platform I am developing: https://openmimosablog.wordpress.com/
Learn about Artificial Life in my Introduction to Artificial Life for People who Like AI on The Gradient.
I used to write about my ideas and curate exciting science on Medium
This very old blog has scientific ideas as well as more personal stories.
Most of my papers are listed in my Google Scholar profile