Collaborators

Originator of the free energy principle. Collaboration began with "Of woodlice and men" (2018) and continues through co-authored papers on variational synthesis (2023), evolutionary dynamics, federated inference (2024), and ant cognitive models in Active Inferants (2021).

PhD advisor. Foundational work on the behavioral, physiological, and transcriptomic bases of collective behavior in harvester ants across the PhD dissertation (2019), dopamine regulation of foraging (2018), ant genetics review (2016), and brain gene expression (2020).

Co-mentored NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship at UC Davis (2020–2023), focusing on distributed physiology (2020), neurotransmitter natural variation (2020), and honey bee gene expression (2023).

Collaborated on multi-agent Active Inference models, particularly on shared protentions (anticipatory representations) in multi-agent systems and cognitive architectures.

Collaborated on formal Active Inference architectures and multi-agent systems, including work on shared protentions (2024), federated inference (2024), Active Inferants (2021), and distributed science (2023).

Founder of COGSEC.org. Developed cognitive security frameworks including The Facilitator's Catechism (2020), Digital Rhetorical Ecosystem Analysis (2021), P3IF (2023), image meme research (2024), and the Cognitive Integrity Framework (2026).

Co-author of the Active Inference textbook (Parr, Pezzulo & Friston, 2022). Co-authored with Friedman on variational synthesis (2023) and federated inference (2024).

Co-mentored the postdoctoral work on evolutionary genomics in social insects, contributing to distributed physiology (2020) and work on chemical and transcriptomic diversity in Blattodea (2024).

Developed a parsimonious single-pheromone model that accounts for empirical patterns of ant colony foraging previously explained by two-pheromone models, published as a single-pheromone model (2023).

Collaboration on foundational questions connecting physics, information processing, and Active Inference. Friedman produced the transcript and educational materials for Fields' "Physics as Information Processing" course at the Active Inference Institute, published as a course transcript (2023).

Co-developed the Thoughtseeds framework — a hierarchical and agentic model for investigating thought dynamics in meditative states using Active Inference — in Thoughtseeds (2025) and shared protentions (2024).

Explored whether ant colonies can serve as test cases for scientific theories of consciousness in the ant colony as a test for scientific theories of consciousness (2019).

Dennett Explained — an interview on philosophy of mind and consciousness.

On free will or the lack thereof — an interview on free will and determinism.

The neuroscience of decision making — an interview on decision neuroscience.