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OREL at the Active Inference Institute's 4th Applied ActInf Symposium

OREL participated in the 4th Applied Active Inference Symposium with talks on nonstandard cybernetics, open-source and open science, and management & leadership for research and innovation.

OREL @ ActInf Symposium

The Orthogonal Research and Education Laboratory (OREL) recently participated in the 4th Applied Active Inference Symposium hosted by the Active Inference Institute. Spanning over two 12-hour livestreams, the event featured a range of innovative talks that explored applications of active inference, cybernetics, open-source methodologies, and more. An abstract book of the Symposium presentations is available on Zenodo, and a report was shared by Bradly Alicea during the November 16 session of Saturday Morning NeuroSim.

OREL’s contributions to the Symposium are highlighted in a dedicated playlist on their YouTube channel. Notable presentations include:

  • Purposefully Nonstandard Cybernetics: an alternative to purpose-driven control — By Bradly Alicea, this talk is derived from OREL’s Cybernetics Interest Group, and reinterprets cybernetics, complexity theory, and neuroscience literature in light of classical teleology and “purpose-driven” concepts.
  • An Overview of Open-Source and Open Science — Showcasing the Open-source Interest Group, this session outlines a vision for distributed, collaborative research using open-science principles. Guest speaker Steffen Bollmann (University of Queensland) expands on computational reproducibility and containerization, sharing insights on the NeuroDesk (video) platform.
  • Management and Leadership: On Navigation for Research + Innovation — Jesse Parent discusses strategies for effective research project management, highlighting best practices for guiding teams and fostering innovation.

These talks underscore OREL’s commitment to exploring unorthodox frameworks, promoting open collaboration, and advancing multidisciplinary research.