Stefano Nichele, Professor profile picture

Stefano Nichele

Professor
Østfold University of Applied Sciences (Norway)

Principal Investigator
Living Machines Lab

X @stenichele -- LinkedIn -- Google Scholar

Email: stefano [DOT] nichele [AT] hiof [DOT] no
Address: B R A Veien 4, 1783 Halden, Norway
Office nr.: D1-039


My research is in Artificial Life (ALife).

I investigate how life and intelligence emerge, develop, and evolve through interactions—from cells to organisms and from autonomous AI agents to ecosystems.

This leads me to ask questions such as:
  • How are life and intelligence related?
  • How do local interactions generate collective learning, reasoning, and agency?
  • How do adaptive systems maintain their organisation, and why does it break down (e.g., misalignment, ageing)?
  • How might general intelligence and artificial life emerge from interactions among many agents?
  • Which societal changes are needed (laws, governance, economies, institutions) for societies of humans and living AI agents to coexist and thrive?

My work focuses on two interconnected directions:
  • Neural Cellular Automata (NCAs): I explore NCAs for meta-learning and reasoning, and as models of biological development, regeneration, and ageing.
  • Agentic AI Ecosystems: I study autonomous AI agent ecologies as Artificial Life. I explore positive and developmental alignment through interactions among agents and humans.

Keywords

  • Artificial Life, Complex Systems, EvoDevo, Neural Cellular Automata
  • Agentic AI Ecosystems, Collective Intelligence, Alignment, Governance


Short CV

  • 2022 - ongoing: Professor, Østfold University of Applied Sciences, Halden, Norway
  • 2022 - 2025: Professor II, OsloMet, Oslo, Norway
  • 2023 - 2023: Visiting Professor (6 months), University of Bologna, Cesena, Italy
  • 2021 - 2022: Professor, OsloMet, Oslo, Norway
  • 2020 - 2022: Adjunct Research Scientist, Simula Metropolitan, Oslo, Norway
  • 2017 - 2021: Associate Professor, OsloMet, Oslo, Norway
  • 2014 - 2017: Researcher, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway
  • 2016 - 2016: Visiting Researcher at Robotics, Evolution and Art Lab, ITU, Copenhagen, Denmark
  • 2010 - 2014: PhD in Computer Science, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway
  • 2007 - 2009: MSc in Computer Science, Univerity of Insubria, Varese, Italy


Awards

  • 2026: NORA national award for AI Community Building and Education
  • 2026: ALICE 2026 workshop runner-up Award for our project on Symbiogenesis
  • 2025: ARC-AGI 2025 Paper Award runner-up
  • 2025: Researcher of the year (Forskningsprisen) at Østfold Univeristy of Applied Sciences
  • 2024: Distinguished Early-Career Investigator Award by the International Society for Artificial Life
  • 2024: Best oral presentation award at NORA annual conference 2024
  • 2022: Best paper award at ICML (International Conference on Machine Learning) workshop "Collective Learning Across Scales"
  • 2021: IEEE Brain Award runner-up at IEEE SSCI 2021
  • 2019: Young Research Talent Award by the Norwegian Research Council (NFR)
  • 2017: Best poster award at ECAL 2017
  • 2015: Publication Prize at the Dept. of Computer and Information Science at NTNU, Norway
  • 2015: Best paper award at Future Computing 2015


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