Invited Speakers
Judith Rosen
Judith is Robert Rosen’s daughter, who shared a deep intellectual bond with the father of anticipation, and as Rosen’s health declined, she accompanied him on scientific trips, gaining profound insight into his work. After his passing in 1998, she discovered online debates misinterpreting his ideas and began clarifying his work. This led to co-authoring papers, giving talks, and focusing on Anticipatory Systems Theory—Rosen’s key contribution to understanding life. Robert Rosen argued that living organisms don’t just react but anticipate future events based on encoded environmental models. Judith highlights the dangers of flawed models, particularly in the context of climate change, and continues to share Rosen’s work as part of a commitment to future generations.
Pedro Márquez-Zacarías, PhD.
Pedro Márquez-Zacarías is an Omidyar Postdoctoral Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, United States. His primary research focuses on the origin, organization, and evolution of living beings. Pedro earned his undergraduate degree in biomedical research from the Faculty of Medicine at UNAM and completed his Ph.D. in mathematical biology at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, United States. In addition to biology, he also conducts philological research on the Purépecha language—his cultural heritage—as well as studies in the history and philosophy of biology.
Emma Bingham, PhD.
Emma Bingham is originally from the beach town of Wilmington, N.C., and moved to Boston for college, majoring in physics at MIT. During her undergrad years, she split her time between working in research labs and editing the student newspaper. After college, she worked at a data and journalism startup, where she learned a lot about business and economics data and reporting. Working at the company expanded her understanding of what research is and can be, and she decided to use this understanding to go back to school and pursue a doctorate in biology, a longtime interest of hers. She joined the Quantitative Biosciences Ph.D. program at Georgia Tech in 2021 and is co-advised by Peter Yunker and Will Ratcliff. Her Ph.D. research focuses primarily on the physics of the origin of multicellular life. Her research is informed by curiosity about the big questions in biology, which is what led her to an interest in relational biology and anticipatory systems.