Research

My research explores a simple but powerful idea: life doesn’t just happen within boundaries — it actively creates, maintains, and transforms those boundaries to survive and evolve. I call this the constraint–function loop: a cycle where constraints enable functions, and functions, in turn, reshape the constraints. This perspective helps explain how living systems (and life-like technologies) adapt to unpredictable worlds, sometimes by stabilizing their surroundings, allowing them to focus on thriving rather than constantly reacting.

In my work, I develop mathematical and computational tools to study how these patterns emerge. For example, I simulate agents that form colonies, collectively buffering their environment so that interior agents can survive with minimal effort — a process similar to how cells in a biofilm protect one another. These models help us see how life builds cooperative structures to manage chaos, creating conditions where new forms of individuality and specialization can grow.

I also work on universal, zero-knowledge frameworks for decoding meaning from signals. If a message comes from a totally unknown source — even an alien civilization — could we still make sense of it? By applying tools from algorithmic information dynamics, I explore how to recover structure and meaning without any shared assumptions, going beyond traditional coding theories. This work is relevant not just for biosignature or technosignature detection, but also for understanding how any intelligent system might communicate in unknown environments.

Stepping back, I see living systems as processes that gather information and transform themselves and their worlds. My long-term goal is to develop a new mathematical language for describing how life emerges, evolves, and organizes itself, and to apply these insights to design technologies that behave more like living systems. If we could truly understand biology as precisely as we understand physics or chemistry, we might finally answer questions about life’s origins — and create technology that grows and evolves alongside us, with freedom rather than strict control.

At the heart of my research is a desire to build systems that are not only efficient but also meaningful: systems that can adapt, transform, and even discover their own sense of purpose.