Dr. Hector Zenil conducts research in Biomedical Systems Engineering, leveraging and combining tools from Complexity Science, Computability Theory, and Causal AI.

He introduced the field of Algorithmic Information Dynamics, a symbolic regression and program synthesis framework based on optimal inference theory that combines classical and algorithmic information theories with causal inference and perturbation analysis to tackle inverse problems.

Before joining KCL, Dr. Zenil was at the Machine Learning Group, Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at the University Cambridge. and the Structural Biology Group at Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford as a faculty member, senior researcher and Templeton Principal Investigator. He is affiliated with The Alan Turing Institute as one of ten appointed independent AI advisors.

Before coming back to the UK, Dr. Zenil was an Assistant Professor and Lab leader at the Algorithmic Dynamics Lab, Unit of Computational Medicine, Center for Molecular Medicine and SciLifeLab at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden where he was the recipient of the prestigious VR Young Researcher Award.

He holds two PhDs, one in Computer Science and one in Logic and Epistemology from Paris 1 Sorbonne/Ecole National Superiore, and Lille 1 in France. His first postdoctoral position in the UK was at the Behavioural and Evolutionary Theory Lab at the University of Sheffield and has been an invited scholar and invited professor at the MIT, Carnegie Mellon, the National University of Singapore and KAUST.

His research interests include bio- and techno-signatures, the dynamics of health and disease, complexity sciences and applications of (algorithmic) information theory to fundamental science, in particular to optimal inference and Artificial General Intelligence.

Dr. Zenil is also a Trustee of the board of the British Society for Research on Ageing, the oldest scientific society devoted to research into the biology of ageing and longevity. He is also Academic Entrepreneur in Residence at the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering and a member of the King’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence at KCL.

In 2024, he was awarded the Charles François Prize by the International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences at the World Conference on Complex Systems.