Bio

Formal bio

Lancelot Da Costa is a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen, working with Bernhard Schölkopf. He received his PhD in Mathematics from Imperial College London, advised by Grigorios Pavliotis and Karl Friston, and his thesis won the Best Maths PhD Thesis Prize. He previously worked at VERSES with Karl Friston and interned at MILA with Yoshua Bengio, after studying mathematics and neuroscience at EPFL, Cambridge and UCL. His work formalized the free-energy principle, an influential theory of brain function, and he now develops AI that learns like we do, through active world modeling. He leads ATOM, a focused research community working on these questions.

Personal background 🌍

  • I was born in Japan and lived in 8 different countries… and counting! 🗺
  • After work I like
    • Doing sports (yoga, climbing 🧗‍♂️, volleyball 🏐 … anything is fun!), ideally with friends,
    • Spending time with friends (usually - but not always - over a delicious meal 🍜),
    • Cooking (nothing complicated - fast, healthy, and mostly vegetarian dishes 🥗),
    • Reading (science fiction 🚀, self-help and biographies, mostly 📖).
    • Sleeping 😴. This is my number 🥇 activity - I sleep more than anyone I know, and probably anyone you know as well 🦥.
  • On holiday, I like to discover
    • New places and cultures 🎭, and experience life like a local from another place,
    • New (and enjoy known) cuisines 🍝 - I am a huge foodie!,
    • Breathtaking nature landscapes 🏜 and cities 🗽, sometimes through hiking, skiing ⛷, sailing or mountaineering!
    • … And recharge ⚡🔋.