About Manuel
Biography and research background for Manuel Baltieri, from active inference and cognitive science to agent foundations at Araya.
Born and bred in the Italian countryside, Manuel lived in a tiny village (less than 1500 people) surrounded by vineyards for most of his life. He studied accounting before realising that his place was not at a desk dealing with double entry bookkeeping.
He thus shifted to computer engineering (and business administration), graduating from the University of Trento, Italy, and later studied artificial intelligence and cognitive science at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK. At Sussex, he also completed a PhD in informatics and artificial intelligence, under the supervision of Chris Buckley, working on ideas of variational free energy minimisation and active inference as models of sensorimotor loops in the context of embodied and enactive cognitive science.
Following his PhD, he worked with Chris, Anil Seth and Warrick Roseboom on applications of active inference to robotics (Chris) and modelling of responses in psychophysics (Anil and Warrick). In November 2019, Manuel joined RIKEN CBS, Saitama, Japan, as a JSPS/Royal Society Postdoctoral Fellow to work with Taro Toyoizumi on models of uncertainty for human behaviour and perception. In November 2021, he moved to Araya Inc., Tokyo, Japan, to work on artificial intelligence and machine learning. He later became Chief Researcher and, in October 2025, Research Team Leader and an ARIA R&D Creator, leading research on agent foundations. He has also served on the Board of Directors of the International Society for Artificial Life since November 2023.
Current and recent positions
2025–present — Research Team Leader and ARIA R&D Creator, Araya Inc., Tokyo, Japan
2023–present — Board of Directors, International Society for Artificial Life
2022–2025 — Chief Researcher, Araya Inc., Tokyo, Japan
2021–2022 — Researcher, Araya Inc., Tokyo, Japan
2020–present — Visiting Research Fellow, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
2019–2021 — JSPS/Royal Society Postdoctoral Research Fellow, RIKEN CBS, Wako, Saitama, Japan
2019 — Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
2015–2019 — PhD in Informatics and Artificial Intelligence, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
