Elias Najarro

Elias Najarro

@najarro.science

Computational physicist. Working on self-organisation & AI • Postdoc at @real.itu.dk • SciComm at http://slam.science • 🎭🪩🏔️ 🌐 https://najarro.science

1.4K followers788 following59 posts

Elias Najarro
@najarro.science

Last few days to register for ALICE. Join us in Norway! 🏔️

ALICE Workshop@aliceworkshop.org

Following a few requests, and honoring the sacred academic tradition of the extension, we've pushed the application deadline by 72h to October 4th, 2026 (23:59 AoE) 🌐 aliceworkshop.org/attending

Elias Najarro reposted

ALICE Workshop
@aliceworkshop.org

We are excited to announce the second edition of the Artificial Life, Intelligence, Complexity & Evolution (ALICE) workshop. ALICE is coming back, this time to Geilo, Norway in the first week of February 2027 🏔️ Details and registration: aliceworkshop.org

Elias Najarro
@najarro.science

Complexity and interpretability rarely coincide: complex systems are usually too opaque to question, while transparent ones are too simple interesting dynamics to emerge. What if we treated LLM agents as the basic computational unit to build agentic substrates? Paper thread 🧵

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Elias Najarro
@najarro.science

In short: we argue that collectives of agentic LLMs can be seen as a computational substrate with individual LLMs as the basic computational unit. The resulting substrate displays emergent dynamics absent from isolated models, and, we argue, can serve as an experimental testbed.

Elias Najarro
@najarro.science

Complexity and interpretability rarely coincide: complex systems are usually too opaque to question, while transparent ones are too simple interesting dynamics to emerge. What if we treated LLM agents as the basic computational unit to build agentic substrates? Paper thread 🧵

Elias Najarro
@najarro.science

Because the agents interact in natural language, the collective remains open to inspection: you can read the traces, or simply ask the agents themselves! Where classical ALife derives interpretability from unit simplicity, agentic collectives derive it from unit interrogability.

Elias Najarro
@najarro.science

What do we mean by *agentic* anyway? We consider LLMs to be agentic when endowed with persistent memory, a self-extensible pool of tools and skills, and the capacity to act unprompted. Easy.

Elias Najarro
@najarro.science

Self-organising systems often trade compute for memory. Here, we study how prepatterns give developmental systems some nice properties like symmetry breaking and memory capacity. Preprint in the 🧵

Milton@miltonllera.bsky.social

New research out — A developmental model with morphogenetic scaffoldings to guide self-organisation: a single model, many grown patterns. The memory-compute trade-off but in self-organizing systems. A collab featuring @najarro.science, Jakob Schauser and @risi.bsky.social and yours truly

Elias Najarro
@najarro.science

Call for papers for 'Artificial Life for Science and Engineering' at ALife 26. We seek work applying ALife concepts and tools to model real-world systems and engineer solutions — and assist scientific discovery through open-ended and curiosity-driven search. Call info: alifeforscience.github.io

Elias Najarro reposted

ALICE Workshop
@aliceworkshop.org

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 !

Elias Najarro reposted

DataBeers Copenhagen
@databeers-cph.bsky.social

WE ARE BACK! 🚀🚀🚀 📢 #databeers #copenhagen x Absalon is back on March 10th, SAVE THE DATE! Many thanks to our sponsors, the Danish Data Science Academy and the Danmarks Tekniske Universitet Speaker announcement and tickets out soon, stay tuned!

Elias Najarro reposted

Elise Cutts
@elisecutts.bsky.social

Hey complexity and complexity-adjacent people: What are some of your favorite pop-sci books? Are there any you've had your eye on but haven't had a chance to read yet? They can be new or old. I'd just love to know what y'all are reading!

Elias Najarro
@najarro.science

Horse genes shedding light on human history 5000 years ago.. Fascinating.

Philip Ball@philipcball.bsky.social

Just caught up on this fascinating paper in Science in August. It reports evidence of strong selective pressure from breeding of horses around 5000-3000 years ago in Central Asia. One reason it's interesting is that the selection is *really* strong... /1 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

science.orgSelection at the GSDMC locus in horses and its implications for human mobilityHorsepower revolutionized human history through enhanced mobility, transport, and warfare. However, the suite of biological traits that reshaped horses during domestication remains unclear. We scanned...

Elias Najarro reposted

ALICE Workshop
@aliceworkshop.org

We are excited to announce the Artificial Life, Intelligence, Complexity & Evolution (𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗖𝗘) workshop. This first edition will be hosted in Copenhagen on the first week of February. We will soon be announcing the guest speakers—Stay tuned! Check our website for more information: aliceworkshop.org

Elias Najarro
@najarro.science

The yearly ALife virtual creature competition is back 👾

ALIFE Conference 2025@alife2025.bsky.social

Be part of the next generation of virtual creatures: Enter the 2025 Virtual Creatures Competition (VCC)! Held at #ALIFE2025, the #VCC is an annual competition to showcase recent research in the field of artificial life. Judges and prizes to be announced soon. ⬇️ ⬇️

Elias Najarro
@najarro.science

Cultures of biological neurons outperforming deep RL in sample efficiency 🔥 spj.science.org/doi/10.34133...

spj.science.orgDynamic Network Plasticity and Sample Efficiency in Biological Neural Cultures: A Comparative Study with Deep Reinforcement Learning | Cyborg and Bionic SystemsIn this study, we investigate the complex network dynamics of in vitro neural systems using DishBrain, which integrates live neural cultures with high-density multi-electrode arrays in real-time, clos...
Elias Najarro
@najarro.science

Beautiful text. Embracing the problem of induction—despite tech narratives, people aren't their data.

Eryk Salvaggio@eryk.bsky.social

Hi all. I wrote a bit about my father, who died suddenly on June 30. It is also about the real possibility of change against illusions of perpetuity, and what data can and cannot do for remembering what is unsaid. mail.cyberneticforests.com/my-fathers-d...

mail.cyberneticforests.comMy Father's DataMy father died on June 30 while rescuing a bird trapped inside his garage. While closing a window behind it, he fell from a ladder, lost consciousness, and died. It was the week of his birthday, and h...
Elias Najarro
@najarro.science

The European instance of @neuripsconf.bsky.social hosted in Copenhagen ✨

NeurIPS Europe@neuripseurope.bsky.social

EurIPS is coming! 📣 Mark your calendar for Dec. 2-7, 2025 in Copenhagen 📅 EurIPS is a community-organized conference where you can present accepted NeurIPS 2025 papers, endorsed by @neuripsconf.bsky.social and @nordicair.bsky.social and is co-developed by @ellis.eu eurips.cc

Elias Najarro reposted

Erwan Plantec
@eplantec.bsky.social

Synthetic ecosystems that autonomously and continuously evolve in silico 👾 An Alifer dream we pursue with Flow-Lenia, a mass-conservative continuous CA ! If you are interested in complex systems with (1) emergent creatures and (2) intrinsic evolutionary dynamics, go check our new paper ! A 🧵

Elias Najarro
@najarro.science

The @alife2025.bsky.social deadline has been extended one week—new deadline May 11th 2025 23:59 AoE Join us in Kyoto for #ALife2025 🎏

Elias Najarro@najarro.science

Announcing SONI: Self-Organising Neural Intelligence(s) 🧠 An #ALife2025 special session to bring together AI & ALife communities to explore how self-organisation can contribute to neural paradigms of intelligence. Call for papers sites.google.com/view/soni-al... |Submission deadline: May 4th

sites.google.comSelf-Organising Neural Intelligence(s)Important dates: Submission Deadline: May 4th, 2025 Author Notification: TBA
Elias Najarro
@najarro.science

Fascinating results. All you need to evolve multicellularity is smashing single cell archaea together! From an ALife/biocomplexity angle, it speaks of how critical it is having a dynamic self-organising substrate-representation to evolve complexity www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

science.orgTissue-like multicellular development triggered by mechanical compression in archaeaThe advent of clonal multicellularity is a critical evolutionary milestone, seen often in eukaryotes, rarely in bacteria, and only once in archaea. We show that uniaxial compression induces clonal mul...

Elias Najarro reposted

ALIFE Conference 2025
@alife2025.bsky.social

Save the date! The annual #Conference on #ArtificialLife - #ALIFE2025 will take place in the heart of Kyoto, Japan, from 6-10 October 2025. The conference logo, official website launch, and more details coming soon!

Elias Najarro reposted

Ricard Solé
@ricardsole.bsky.social

What are the limits to engineering multicellular systems? Can we invent new organs or synthetic behaviour? We discuss these and other ideas in our latest paper with @jordiplam.bsky.social @jgojalvo.bsky.social @drmichaellevin.bsky.social & cols www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.comOpen problems in synthetic multicellularity - npj Systems Biology and Applicationsnpj Systems Biology and Applications - Open problems in synthetic multicellularity