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Francis Heylighen

Francis Heylighen
FrancisHeylighen2009.jpg
Born (1960-09-27) 27 September 1960 (age 56)
Vilvoorde, Belgium
Nationality Belgian
Fields Cybernetics, Complex systems,
Institutions Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Doctoral students Johan Bollen, Carlos Gershenson
Known for Principia Cybernetica, research on Self-Organization, Memetics, Global brain
Influences Donald T. Campbell, Herbert A. Simon, William Ross Ashby, Ilya Prigogine, Valentin Turchin
Website
http://pcp.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html

Francis Paul Heylighen (born 1960) is a Belgian cyberneticist investigating the emergence and evolution of intelligent organization. He presently works as a research professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking Free University of Brussels, where he directs the transdisciplinary research group on "Evolution, Complexity and Cognition" and the Global Brain Institute. He is best known for his work on the Principia Cybernetica Project, his model of the Internet as a Global brain, and his contributions to the theories of memetics and self-organization. He is also known, albeit to a lesser extent, for his work on gifted people and their problems.

Francis Heylighen was born on September 27, 1960 in Vilvoorde, Belgium. He received his high school education from the "Koninklijk Atheneum Pitzemburg" in Mechelen, in the section Latin-Mathematics. He received his MSc in mathematical physics in 1982 from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), where he also received his PhD Summa cum Laude in Sciences in 1987 for his thesis, published in 1990, as "Representation and Change. A Metarepresentational Framework for the Foundations of Physical and Cognitive Science."

In 1983 he started working as a researcher for the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (NFWO). In 1994 he became a tenured researcher at the NFWO and in 2001 a research professor at the VUB. Since 1995 he has been affiliated with the VUB’s Center Leo Apostel for interdisciplinary studies. In 2004 he created the ECCO research group which he presently directs. Thanks to a grant from a private sponsor, in 2012 he additionally founded the Global Brain Institute at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, becoming its first director.


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