Jes Parent is Director of JOPRO. He leads the organization’s research incubation, working groups, and field-building programs, and works closely with affiliated researchers, fellows, and collaborating organizations.
His background spans nearly two decades across startups, healthcare R&D, government, nonprofits, and higher education. He holds an MSc in Data Science from UC San Diego; that work shaped the development of JOPRO’s Data x Direction program.
Earlier, Jes founded the Society, Ethics & Technology working group and the Cognition Futures working group at Orthogonal Research and Education Laboratory. Both groups served as early models of the cross-disciplinary inquiry JOPRO has continued to develop.
Working groups & centers
Cognition Futures
Founder
Research group focused on embodied intelligence, affordance perception, spatial cognition, and the future of mind.
View group →Society Ethics Technology (SET)
Founder
Joint initiative between JOPRO and OREL exploring the intersections of society, ethics, and technology.
View group →Mental Health Paradigms & Perspectives
Co-Founder
Accessible Models, Emotional Literacy, and Mental Health Innovation
View group →Center for Futures Studies
Co-Founder
Launching in Q3 2026 - Call for involvement & advisors is now open
View group →Representational Brains & Phenotypes
Contributor
Empirical and artificial models of neurobehavioral complexity
View group →DevoWorm
Contributor
Developmental and computational biology centered on C. elegans and other model organisms
View group →Programs & initiatives
From Here to There: Strategy and Mentorship for Innovators
Founder & Director
Exploring emerging narratives, directionality, and the future of human experience
View program →DigiNEST
Co-Founder and Co-Lead
Digital Narratives and Emerging Story Technologies (DigiNEST). A discussion series exploring how digital tools reshape narrative, authorship, and agency.
View program →Data x Direction
Director
Examining how data science practices and tools intersect with ethical decision-making, human-centered AI, and governance frameworks.
View program →Joint Open Source Summer Cohort
Program Leadership
A collaborative summer cohort across OREL, DevoWorm, and JOPRO — open-source contribution, instruction, and professional development, anchored by Google Summer of Code.
View program →Open-source Sustainability
Advisor
A multi-year initiative investigating the long-term health and sustainability of open-source communities through agent-based modeling, active inference, and cybernetic approaches.
View program →SMN @ OREL
Research Coordinator
Flagship public programming from Orthogonal Research and Education Lab. Weekly session on updates and discussion from across the lab network.
View program →Cognition Futures Reading Group
Program Lead
The Cognition Futures Reading Group explores concepts, methods, and opportunities in diverse intelligences (natural and artificial), phenomenology, and contemporary discussions on minds
View program →Modernizing Mental Health
Co-Lead
Bridging emerging research, technology, and practice to advance how we understand and support mental health
View program →Neuromatch Academy Slow Pod
A self-paced cohort organized by Orthogonal Research and Education Lab (OREL) around Neuromatch Academy's computational neuroscience curriculum.
View program →Projects
Field Guide to Futures Ecosystem
Lead
Cartography of next-generation foresight organizations
Steelmanning the Problem Space
Project Lead
Methodology for rigorous collaborative problem definition
Reimagining Cybernetics
Vizualizating Experience of Mental Health Models
Advisor
Examining cultural bias in dominant mental health frameworks
Ethical Policy Analyzer
Towards standardizing and increased transparency in ESG reporting
BraGenBrain
Contributor
Braitenberg Vehicles Genetic Algorithms Simulation of Neural Development
Towards an Ontological Taxonomy of Information Affordances
Advisor
Theory and case study converted into heuristic prompts and appropriate tool routing towards relevant external representations of information
Allostatic Kinds
A taxonomy of permutations of subject-object directionality in causation
Sustainability Auditing Tool (SAT)
Advisor
A web-based auditing platform for evaluating the long-term sustainability and community health of open-source projects.
Mind/Brain Analogies & Technological Development
Lead
Historical and cross-cultural investigation of how societies analogize the mind, and how those analogies track technological change
Publications
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A 'good' regulator may provide a world model for intelligent systems
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A
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Landscape of Futurists: Toward a Cartography of Next-Generation Foresight Organizations
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"The Mind as a '___'": Past, Present, and Futures of Analogies of Mind & Brain and its Relationship to Technological Development
Embodied Intelligence 2024
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A Brief History of Cybernetic Imperatives and Behavior
PsyArXiv
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Continual Developmental Neurosimulation Using Embodied Computational Agents
IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 1321, 012013
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A Primer on Gibsonian Information
arXiv:2403.18829
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Landscapes and Learning Objectives: FrontierMap and the Challenges of Imbuing Contextual Nuance into Research Practices
Hyperdigital Designs, University of Cambridge
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Key Concepts in Tech Careers and Tech Ethics in 2023
ACM NYCWiC 2023
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Open-source Community Sustainability using Agent-based Models
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AI and Equality: a Multidisciplinary Approach to Confronting AI Bias
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Embodied Cognitive Morphogenesis as a Route to Intelligent Systems
Royal Society Interface Focus, 20220067
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Our Virtual Lives and Digital Companionship: Opportunities and Challenges of Shared Experience in an Augmented Century
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The Psychophysical World of the Motile Diatom Bacillaria Paradoxa
Mathematics and Biology of Diatoms, Chapter 9
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Towards Sharing Cognitive Environments: Methodology and Theory
WeRobot 2022
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Our Virtual Lives and Digital Companionship: Opportunities and Challenges of Shared Experience in an Augmented Century
WeRobot 2022
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Braitenberg Vehicles as Developmental Neurosimulation
Artificial Life, 28(3), 1–27
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Gibsonian Information: A New Approach to Quantitative Information
Studies in Computational Intelligence, 1032, 15–19
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Intelligence Offloading and the Neurosimulation of Developmental Agents
IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 1292, 012019 (International Workshop on Embodied Intelligence)
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Layers, Folds, and Semi-Neuronal Information Processing
Procedia Computer Science, 213, 443–452
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Meta-brain Models: Biologically-inspired Cognitive Agents
Proceedings of the Embodied Intelligence Workshop, 20
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Research Methods in Cognition Studies & Phenomenology: Challenges and Opportunities
Neuromatch 5
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Terminology & Taxonomy: of Agent-Environment Analyses & Recent Work at Orthogonal Research and Education Lab
International Conference on Embodied Intelligence 2022
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Allostasis Machines: a model for understanding internal states and technological environments
PsyArXiv
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Mapping Cyborg Cognition Futures: From Partitioned Pasts to a Symbiotic Century
Conference on Artificial Life (ALIFE 2021), Prague
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Allostatic Kinds: Towards a Taxonomy of Permutations of Subject-Object Directionality in Causation
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Neuromorphogenetic Patterns and the Theory of Deep Learning
NetNeuro Satellite, Networks Conference
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Periodicity in the Embryo: Emergence of Order in Space, Diffusion of Order in Time
BioSystems, 204, 104405
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AI and Equality: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Confronting AI Bias
ACM NYCWiC 2019