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The core of scientific research is turning new ideas into reality. From the school science fair to the search for the secrets of dark energy, high-quality research consists of scientific investigation constrained within the scope of a…
The path toward the emergence of life in our biosphere involved several key events allowing for the persistence, reproduction and evolution of molecular systems. All these processes took place in a given environmental context and required…
The history of science reveals that major discoveries are not predictable. Naively, one might conclude therefore that it is not possible to artificially cultivate an environment that promotes discoveries. I suggest instead that open…
The question of "what is life?" has challenged scientists and philosophers for centuries, producing an array of definitions that reflect both the mystery of its emergence and the diversity of disciplinary perspectives brought to bear on the…
This thesis broadly concerns the origins of life problem, pursuing a joint approach that combines general philosophical/conceptual reflection on the problem along with more detailed and formal scientific modelling work oriented in the…
Recent discoveries imply that Early Mars was habitable for life-as-we-know-it; that Enceladus might be habitable; and that many stars have Earth-sized exoplanets whose insolation favors surface liquid water. These exciting discoveries make…
Since its inception six decades ago, astrobiology has diversified immensely to encompass several scientific questions including the origin and evolution of Terran life, the organic chemical composition of extraterrestrial objects, and the…
In an increasingly connected and networked world, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recognizes the value of the public as a strategic partner in addressing some of our most pressing challenges. The agency is working…
Cooperation is a widespread natural phenomenon yet current evolutionary thinking is dominated by the paradigm of selfish competition. Recent advanced in many fronts of Biology and Non-linear Physics are helping to bring cooperation to its…
Why are life trajectories difficult to predict? We investigated this question through in-depth qualitative interviews with 40 families sampled from a multi-decade longitudinal study. Our sampling and interviewing process were informed by…
Understanding the Universe's origins and evolution remains one of the most fundamental challenges in modern cosmology. This white paper explores three key science priorities in this field: unravelling the physics of cosmic inflation,…
Although it has been notoriously difficult to pin down precisely what it is that makes life so distinctive and remarkable, there is general agreement that its informational aspect is one key property, perhaps the key property. The unique…
Humanity has been fascinated by the pursuit of fortune since time immemorial, and many successful outcomes benefit from strokes of luck. But success is subject to complexity, uncertainty, and change - and at times becoming increasingly…
Data Science research is undergoing a revolution fueled by the transformative power of technology, the Internet, and an ever increasing computational capacity. The rate at which sophisticated algorithms can be developed is unprecedented,…
Executive Summary: The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is the first astrophysics flagship mission with a key cross-divisional astrobiology science goal of searching for signs of life on rocky planets beyond our solar system. The Living…
Why life is complex and --most importantly-- what is the origin of the over abundance of complexity in nature? This is a fundamental scientific question which, paraphrasing the late Per Bak, "is screaming to be answered but seldom is even…
Evolutionary and bioinspired computation are crucial for efficiently addressing complex optimization problems across diverse application domains. By mimicking processes observed in nature, like evolution itself, these algorithms offer…
Nearly all cell models explicitly or implicitly deal with the biophysical constraints that must be respected for life to persist. Despite this, there is almost no systematicity in how these constraints are implemented, and we lack a…
The landscape of workflow systems for scientific applications is notoriously convoluted with hundreds of seemingly equivalent workflow systems, many isolated research claims, and a steep learning curve. To address some of these challenges…
Natural evolution gives the impression of leading to an open-ended process of increasing diversity and complexity. If our goal is to produce such open-endedness artificially, this suggests an approach driven by evolutionary metaphor. On the…