The Flourishing Intelligence Program is part of the Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, Linacre College, University of Oxford.
Funded by a generous donation from the Cillo family, this innovative research program is led by Dr. Ruben Laukkonen, in collaboration with Prof. Morten Kringelbach.
This initiative is part of the International Centre for Flourishing, which includes the Computational Neuroscience Group led by Prof. Gustavo Deco at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, and The Center for Music in the Brain, led by Prof. Peter Vuust, Aarhus University, Denmark.
We are an interdisciplinary team of scientists spanning neuroscience, physics, computer science, philosophy, and contemplative practice, working to answer one of the most pressing questions of our time: how can humanity flourish in the age of Artificial Intelligence?
Ruben Laukkonen is the director of the Flourishing Intelligence Program (FLIP) at Linacre College, University of Oxford. He is also a senior researcher and co-director of the Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing at Linacre College, University of Oxford, and a visiting Professor at the Centre for Brain and Cognition, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain. Ruben has made significant theoretical and empirical contributions to the science of consciousness, meditation, and insight. His work reveals a pathway towards better and safer artificial intelligence based on the neuroscience of consciousness and contemplative wisdom. His work has been featured widely, including The New York Times, TIME, Scientific American, TEDx, Vice, ABC, Aeon, VOX, New Scientist, and in the Nature collection.
Professor Morten L. Kringelbach is the founding director of the Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing at Linacre College, University of Oxford. He is a Professor of Neuroscience at Oxford and Aarhus University, and a fellow of Linacre College. His research focuses on reverse-engineering the human brain to elucidate the neural basis of pleasure (hedonia) and the life well‑lived (eudaimonia), using advanced neuroimaging, deep brain stimulation, and whole-brain computational modeling. He has made significant contributions to our understanding of reward, pleasure, music, and the neural mechanisms of well-being. Morten has published 14 books, and over 450 scientific papers, chapters and other articles.
Professor Gustavo Deco (ICREA; Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona) leads the Computational and Theoretical Neuroscience Group at the Center for Brain and Cognition. Gustavo has pioneered whole-brain computational modeling, providing a causal understanding of how distributed brain networks generate cognition, health and disease, and states like anesthesia, psychedelics, and meditation. In 1987 he received his PhD in Physics for his thesis on Relativistic Atomic Collisions. From 1990 to 2003, he lead the Computational Neuroscience Group at Siemens Corporate Research Center in Munich, Germany. He obtained in 1997 his Habilitation (maximal academical degree in Germany) in Computer Science (Dr. rer. nat. habil.) at the Technical University of Munich for his thesis on Neural Learning. In 2001, he received his third PhD, now in Psychology, at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich.
Dr. Shamil Chandaria is a philanthropist, serial entrepreneur, technologist, and academic with multidisciplinary research interests spanning computational neuroscience, machine learning and artificial intelligence, and the philosophy and science of human wellbeing. His Ph.D. from the London School of Economics was in mathematical modeling of economic systems using stochastic differential equations and optimal control theory. Later he completed an M.A. in philosophy with distinction from University College London, where he developed an interest in philosophy of science and philosophical issues in biology, neuroscience, and ethics. In 2018, Dr. Chandaria helped to endow the Global Priorities Institute at Oxford University. In 2019 he was a founder of the Centre for Psychedelic Research in the department of Brain Sciences at Imperial College London, a neuroscience research institute investigating psychedelic therapies for a number of conditions including treatment resistant depression. He has also funded research on the neuroscience of meditation at Harvard, and at the University of California in Berkeley.
Surya is a meditation teacher, tech entrepreneur and donor of the Flourishing Intelligence Program. As a meditation teacher, Surya is one of the last few voices of multiple ancient contemplative traditions from the Himalaya, in which he was born and practiced from an early age. As tech entrepreneurs, Surya and his brothers founded multiple companies spanning artificial intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, biotechnologies, mobile apps, crypto, marketing and wellness. Their businesses include LIFE (a deep tech research company), The Shining Block (a Bitcoin mining company) and SAUTÓN (a wellness brand). As a philanthropist, Surya funds and promotes Advanced Meditation Research in the scientific community, with a specific focus on its implications for the technologies we are building today.