Stefano Nichele

What a week—projects, tutorials, discussion groups, art demo & even a complexity-alife quiz! Thank you to all the attendees who brought a fantastic energy to this year's ALICE workshop.

We can't wait to see you again next year, this time in Norway 🇳🇴

Thank you to @aicentre.dk and @itu.dk !

a tom and jerry cartoon with hearts on his eyes ALT: a tom and jerry cartoon with hearts on his eyes

The first month of 2026 has flown by and today we bring you the new monthly #complexitycat thread, where you'll find opportunities that you will fall in love with. 🧵😻

(Keep an eye next week, we'll bring you more.😉)

OT: here's our new baby, basically a third child. His name is Happy, 9 weeks old ❤️

What a great week at the @aliceworkshop.org (Artificial Life, Intelligence, Complexity & Evolution) in Copenhagen.

Our multidisciplinary group worked intensely for the whole week and we got the 2nd prize!!

Thanks to the amazing organizers from the REAL lab and the jury.

Thanks for the great tips! 👍

Projects time 👨‍💻👩‍💻🧑‍💻

The panel discussion with all the guests speakers and moderated by Milton Montero & @elisecutts.bsky.social

Day two: tutorials, more discussion groups with @angelgm.bsky.social, @kyrre2000.bsky.social and Alexander Mordvintsev

Discussion groups with @stenichele.bsky.social, @alyssa-m-adams.bsky.social, Susan Stepney & @ericmedvetts.bsky.social

Project pitch time 💡

Great project ideas by attendees and guest speakers @alyssa-m-adams.bsky.social, @angelgm.bsky.social, @stenichele.bsky.social, @kyrre2000.bsky.social, @ericmedvetts.bsky.social, Susan Stepney & Alexander Mordvintsev

#ALICEinCopenhagen #ALICE26

Less than a week for ALICE—we are looking forward welcome you all in Copenhagen! ⛄

You can find the updated program here: aliceworkshop.org/program/

Save the date!
The annual #Conference on #ArtificialLife - #ALIFE2026 will take place in Waterloo (Ontario, Canada), 17-21 August 2026. More details coming soon!

Sleep-Based Homeostatic Regularization for Stabilizing Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity in Recurrent Spiking Neural Networks Spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) provides a biologically-plausible learning mechanism for spiking neural networks (SNNs); however, Hebbian weight updates in architectures with recurrent connec...

Check out our new preprint (work led by Andreas Massey) on "Sleep-Based Homeostatic Regularization for Stabilizing Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity in Recurrent Spiking Neural Networks".

arxiv.org/abs/2601.08447

Congrats Dr. Tom Glover for a successful PhD defence at OsloMet

As a supervisor, it has been a pleasure working with you and learning from you.

Thanks to the evaluation committee Kamalika Bhattacharjee, Michele Braccini, and Kazi Shah Nawaz Ripon

Our paper "ARC-NCA: Towards Developmental Solutions to the Abstraction & Reasoning Corpus" has been awarded a Runner-Up #ARCprize

Congrats team: E. Guichard, F. Reimers, M. Kvalsund, M. Lepperød, & me

Thanks F. Chollet, G. Kamradt, M. Knoop!

Paper: etimush.github.io/ARC_NCA/

Public defence: Tom Eivind Harlem Glover Tom Eivind Harlem Glover will defend his thesis “Harvesting the computation of Elementary Cellular Automata with Reservoir Computing” for the PhD in Engineering Science.

Proud supervisor announcement:

Tom will be defending his PhD on December 17th.

Title: “Harvesting the computation of Elementary Cellular Automata with Reservoir Computing”

www.oslomet.no/en/about/eve...

I am delighted to have been elected to the Board of Directors of The International Society for Artificial Life (ISAL), together with talented colleagues from around the world. I look forward to serving such a wonderful & diverse community where disciplinary boundaries disappear!

Prisvinnende forskning på kunstig liv og intelligens – Institutt for informasjonsteknologi og kommunikasjon – Høgskolen i Østfold Professor Stefano Nichele ved Høgskolen i Østfold har fått Forskningsprisen 2024 for sin mangeårige forskning på hvordan intelligente systemer kan etterligne naturens prinsipper.

www.hiof.no/iio/itk/om/a...

@alife2025.bsky.social was such a blast! Met lots of old and new faces and had very good conversations. Already looking forward to next year in Canada 🍁

ALICE workshop guest speakers

This year's ALICE guest speakers 🧑‍🔬

- Angel Goñi-Moreno - @angelgm.bsky.social
- Alyssa Adams - @alyssa-m-adams.bsky.social
- Alexander Mordvintsev
- Eric Medvet - @ericmedvetts.bsky.social
- Kyrre Glette - @kyrre2000.bsky.social
- Stefano Nichele - @stenichele.bsky.social
- Susan Stepney

great opening keynote by Hector Zenil at @alife2025.bsky.social 🇯🇵

the purpose of science (and ALife) is to make sense of patterns in the world

Ready for @alife2025.bsky.social 🇯🇵

Østfold University College is well represented with F. Reimers, C. Vibe, E. Guichard, and me.

Check out our 3 presentations at the Distributed Ciphers special session (EngramNCA, ARC-NCA & critical NCA) on Tue & poster session (RBNs for reservoir computing)!

I finally had the time to revise my website with updated descriptions of my research goals and lab activity: www.nichele.eu

Feedback is welcome 😄

PS. Is it clear enough that I *DO NOT* focus on artificial intelligence applications? 🧠

Detailed program of the Special Session "The Distributed Ciphers" @alife2025.bsky.social

Special session program also available here:
www.nichele.eu/ALIFE-Distri...

The entire program of ALIFE 2025 is available on the conference website: 2025.alife.org/program

See you soon in Kyoto 🇯🇵

see you there!

Nice! Any paper / preprint?

Gross annual salary between NOK 590 000 - 600 000.

Deadline: 12th October 2025

Please share with relevant candidates.

The project may include working with Neural Cellular Automata, Abstraction and Reasoning, Bio-Inspired and Neuro-Inspired AI, Artificial Evolutionary and Developmental Systems, Alignment, Social Learning and Cultural Evolution, and other Artificial Life techniques.

PhD in Open-Ended AI: Novel Methods for Enabling Novelty and Creativity in AI Systems (286193) | Østfold University College Job title: PhD in Open-Ended AI: Novel Methods for Enabling Novelty and Creativity in AI Systems (286193), Employer: Østfold University College, Deadline: Sunday, October 12, 2025

🔥🔥PhD position alert 🔥🔥

I am looking for a talented PhD student at Østfold University College (Norway) to work on "Open-Ended AI: Novel Methods for Enabling Novelty and Creativity in AI Systems".

Apply here: 👇

www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

Nice article on Neural Cellular Automata!

It also talks about our work on ARC-NCA!