Researchers and Collaborators

A historical record of the researchers and collaborators who shaped Cross Labs, 2019–2026. Roles and affiliations below are historical, not current positions, and do not imply involvement with Nooma Labs.

Cross Labs was created and directed by Olaf Witkowski, and established and supported by Cross Compass.

This record recognises the researchers and collaborators who shaped Cross Labs between 2019 and its closure on August 31, 2026. The roles and affiliations below are historically recorded, not current positions, and do not imply involvement with Nooma Labs. Individual periods of involvement varied.

Historical leadership

  • Olaf Witkowski, PhD

    Historical role: Director

    Olaf created and directed Cross Labs and developed its research programme in machine intelligence, cognitive science and artificial life.

  • Alyssa Adams, PhD

    Historical role: Deputy Director

    Alyssa contributed as Deputy Director, supporting the researchers, resources and infrastructure for Cross Labs’ scientific work.

  • Antoine Pasquali, PhD

    Historical role: Innovation Advisor

    Antoine contributed expertise in cognitive neuroscience, deep learning, engineering, automatic control and developmental and industrial robotics.

  • Katsunobu Suzuki

    Historical role: Corporate Strategy Lead

    Katsunobu contributed corporate strategy and experience in semiconductor development and industrial applications of AI.

Researchers

  • Martin Biehl, PhD

    Historical role: Senior Research Scientist

    Martin’s research focused on Bayesian agents, information theory, individuality, goal-directedness and imagination in dynamical systems.

  • Mahdi Khosravy, PhD

    Historical role: Senior Research Scientist

    Mahdi’s recorded research interests included interdisciplinary intelligent systems, generative adversarial networks, model inversion attacks, face recognition and evolutionary optimisation.

  • Nicholas Gutternberg, PhD

    Historical role: Senior Research Scientist

    Nicholas developed approaches to multi-agent artificial intelligence informed by physics and complex systems, with interests in emergent patterns and origins of life. The historical research record also documents a collaboration between Cross Compass and GoodAI.

  • Luc Caspar, PhD

    Historical role: Lab Manager & Research Scientist

    Luc’s research at Cross Labs explored affect and communication through games, drawing on his background in affective science and machine learning.

  • Javi Fernandez, PhD

    Historical role: Research Scientist

    Javier’s recorded research interests included affective computing, artificial life and artificial intelligence.

  • Tanner Lund

    Historical role: Research Scientist

    Tanner’s recorded research interests included heterogeneous multi-agent systems, risk, uncertainty, music, communication and learning.

  • Oneris Rico, PhD

    Historical role: Research Scientist

    Oneris contributed expertise in video content production, cinematography and media design to Cross Labs’ research.

  • Benjamin Calvert

    Historical role: Research Assistant

    Benjamin’s research explored animal communication, the interpretation of meaning and cross-species understanding.

  • Grant Cheng

    Historical role: Research Assistant

    Grant’s recorded research interests included generative AI, reinforcement learning, transformers, self-attention and residual neural networks.

  • Peter Nguyen

    Historical role: Research Assistant

    Peter’s recorded research interests included machine learning for computer vision and biology, and efficient large-scale learning.

  • Oliver Wang

    Historical role: Research Assistant

    Oliver’s work with Cross Labs explored language models for task planning and interaction with the world, alongside interests in robotics and evolutionary life.

  • William Yang

    Historical role: Research Assistant

    William’s recorded research interests included neuroscience and machine learning, collective intelligence, cognitive robotics and AI alignment.

  • Steven Weigh

    Historical role: Designer Advisor

    Steven contributed design expertise and interests in human–machine interaction, cross-cultural collaboration and emerging technology.

External collaborators

  • Nathanael Aubert-Kato, PhD

    Historical role: External Member

    Nathanael’s recorded research interests included molecular robotics, evolutionary optimisation and artificial life.

  • Federico Da Rold, PhD

    Historical role: External Member

    Federico’s recorded research interests included neural networks and evolutionary optimisation.

  • Hector Zenil, PhD

    Historical role: External Member

    Hector’s recorded contributions and expertise included algorithmic dynamics and algorithmic information dynamics.

  • Joe Austerweil, PhD

    Historical role: External Member

    Joe contributed expertise in cognitive psychology and machine learning; the historical record includes his research publications and academic collaborations.

  • Eliott Jacopin, PhD

    Historical role: External Member

    Eliott’s recorded research interests included the characterisation of living systems through formal frameworks and simulations.

  • Praful Gagrani, PhD

    Historical role: External Member

    Praful’s recorded research applied mathematics and mathematical physics to complex systems and origins-of-life questions.

  • Sina Khajehabdollahi

    Historical role: External Member

    Sina’s recorded research interests included complex systems, machine learning, computational neuroscience, self-organising neural networks and open-ended evolution.

  • Samuel Kiegeland

    Historical role: External Member

    Samuel’s recorded research interests included theoretical computer science, machine intelligence and the mathematical capabilities of language models.

  • Christopher Senn

    Historical role: External Member

    Christopher’s recorded research explored robust prediction in nonlinear dynamical systems through reservoir computing.

  • Byran You

    Historical role: External Member

    Byran’s recorded research explored open-ended agents in games, including reinforcement-learning approaches in Minecraft.

  • Keisuke Suzuki, PhD

    Historical role: External Member

    Keisuke’s recorded research explored conscious presence through virtual-reality experiments and theoretical modelling.

Historical advisors

  • Prof. Takashi Ikegami

    Historical affiliation: Professor, University of Tokyo

    Takashi’s recorded research spanned complex systems and artificial life across computer simulations, chemical experiments and robotics.

  • Prof. Michael Levin

    Historical affiliation: Professor, Tufts University

    Michael’s recorded research interests included morphological and behavioural information processing in living systems.

  • Prof. Daniel Polani

    Historical affiliation: Director, Centre for Computer Science and Informatics Research

    Daniel’s historical advisory record reflects expertise in artificial intelligence and adaptive systems at the University of Hertfordshire.

  • Prof. Hiroki Sayama

    Historical affiliation: Director, Center for Collective Dynamics of Complex Systems

    Hiroki’s recorded research interests included complex systems, network science, computational social science, mathematical modelling and artificial life.

Alumni

  • Kaan Akinci

    Historically recorded: Mercari

  • Esin Bahar Akçay

    Historically recorded: Former Research Assistant

  • Payton Bechefsky

    Historically recorded: UCLA

  • Grant Cheng

    Historically recorded: UCLA

  • Q. Tyrell Davis

    Historically recorded: Former Research Scientist

  • Samuel Kiegeland

    Historically recorded: ETH Zürich

  • Sina Khajehabdollahi

    Historically recorded: Max Planck Institute

  • John Kong

    Historically recorded: University of Queensland

  • Jadon Nguyen

    Historically recorded: UCLA

  • Kevin Frans

    Historically recorded: MIT

  • Peter Nguyen

    Historically recorded: UCLA

  • Pranav Pudu

    Historically recorded: University of Texas

  • Gueren Sanford

    Historically recorded: Texas Tech University

  • Christopher Senn

    Historically recorded: Tokyo Institute of Technology

  • Chris Hoang

    Historically recorded: NYU

  • Elena Tapia

    Historically recorded: IBM, Zurich

  • Oliver Wang

    Historically recorded: UCLA

  • William Yang

    Historically recorded: Cambridge University

  • Byran You

    Historically recorded: University of Tokyo

Friends and community

  • Claus Aranha

    Historically recorded: University of Tsukuba

  • Douglas Blackiston

    Historically recorded: Tufts University

  • Bert Chan

    Historically recorded: Independent Researcher

  • Wesley Chan

    Historically recorded: Monash University

  • Axel Cleeremans

    Historically recorded: Université Libre de Bruxelles

  • Antoine Cully

    Historically recorded: Imperial College London

  • Aleksandr Drozd

    Historically recorded: RIKEN CCS

  • Bill Duane

    Historically recorded: Former Google Executive

  • Chrisantha Fernando

    Historically recorded: DeepMind

  • Eduard Fosch-Villaronga

    Historically recorded: eLaw Center for Law and Digital Technologies

  • Rudolf Füchslin

    Historically recorded: Zurich University

  • Mario Galarreta

    Historically recorded: Stanford University

  • Neeraj Gupta

    Historically recorded: Oakland University

  • David Ha

    Historically recorded: Google Brain

  • Takuya Ibaraki

    Historically recorded: Neuro Innovation Unit, NTT

  • Hiroyuki Iizuka

    Historically recorded: Hokkaido University

  • Ryota Kanai

    Historically recorded: Araya

  • Sam Kriegman

    Historically recorded: Harvard University

  • Joel Lehman

    Historically recorded: Carper.ai

  • Grace Lindsay

    Historically recorded: University College London

  • Michael Muthukrishna

    Historically recorded: London School of Economics

  • Yukie Nagai

    Historically recorded: University of Tokyo

  • Anh-Thu (Kayde) Nguyen

    Historically recorded: Ritsumeikan University

  • Stefanos Nikolaidis

    Historically recorded: University of Southern California

  • Geoff Nitschke

    Historically recorded: University of Cape Town

  • Ken Regan

    Historically recorded: University at Buffalo

  • Sebastian Risi

    Historically recorded: IT University of Copenhagen

  • Lana Sinapayen

    Historically recorded: Sony CSL

  • Liza Solomonova

    Historically recorded: McGill University

  • Michael Spranger

    Historically recorded: Sony AI

  • Keisuke Suzuki

    Historically recorded: University of Sussex

  • Eric Schwitzgebel

    Historically recorded: University of California

  • Tim Taylor

    Historically recorded: Monash University

  • Julian Togelius

    Historically recorded: New York University

OUR ACADEMIC PARTNERS

Historical academic collaborations

Cross Labs — Historical Research Archive

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