Stefano Nichele, Professor profile picture

Stefano Nichele

Professor
Østfold University of Applied Sciences (Norway)
Principal Investigator
Living Machines Lab
Visiting Scientist
SIMULA Center for AI Security and Safety
Founder
Another Life Research

X @stenichele -- LinkedIn -- Google Scholar
Email: stefano [DOT] nichele [AT] hiof [DOT] no


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
  • 2026 - ongoing: Visiting Scientist, Simula Center for AI Security and Safety, Oslo, 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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