Visitors seeking to understand how the Institute is organized and governed.
Governance, roles, and organizational units of the Active Inference Institute.
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The Active Inference Institute is organized around a governing Board of Directors, executive Officers, a Scientific Advisory Board, and two operational units for education and research.
The Institute is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization incorporated in Delaware, USA. Governance is exercised through a Board of Directors supported by Officers for operations and a Scientific Advisory Board for scholarly guidance. This structure ensures that the Institute's direction reflects both sound governance and scientific integrity. All governance documents, policies, and processes are maintained as open public records.
The Board of Directors is the primary governing body of the Active Inference Institute. The Board provides strategic direction, fiduciary oversight, and institutional accountability. Board members are responsible for the long-term health and mission alignment of the Institute. The Board meets regularly and maintains public records of its decisions, policies, and governance actions. The Board comprises ten directors of equal standing: Alexander Sabine, Alianna J. Maren, Ana Magdalena Hurtado, Ann Stapleton, Austin Cook, Daniel Friedman, Edward Ober, Ellynne Dec, V. Bleu Knight, and Vladimir Baulin.
Officers are responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Institute. Officer roles include President, Treasurer, and Secretary, among others. Officers implement Board decisions, manage organizational processes, maintain financial records, coordinate communications, and oversee Institute Programs. Officers work closely with the organizational units and report to the Board of Directors.
The Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) provides scientific and scholarly guidance to the Institute. SAB members are experts in Active Inference, computational neuroscience, cognitive science, and related fields. The SAB advises on research directions, educational content, project selection, and the scientific quality of Institute outputs. SAB members may serve as Facilitators for research projects and learning groups. Current members of the Scientific Advisory Board: Adam Safron, Adeel Razi, Alexander Ororbia, Ali Rahmjoo, Andrew Pashea, Antonio Lucas-Alba, Arun Niranjan, Avel Guénin-Carlut, Bradly Alicea, Candice Pattisapu, Chris Fields, Christo Kurisummoottil Thomas, Cory Slater, Elliott Hauser, Haris Neophytou, Héctor Manrique, Holly Grimm, Ian Tennant, Jana Lumi, Joel Dietz, John Clippinger, Joshua Shane, Karl J. Friston, Luca Possati, Mahault Albarracin, Matt Brown, Maxwell J. D. Ramstead, Michael Lennon, Mike Smith, Scott David, Sebastian Alvarado, Shady El Damaty, and Thomas Kehler.
Two organizational units carry out the Institute's programs. The EduActive Unit focuses on education: it supports learning groups, courses, textbook cohorts, seasonal schools, educational course development, and audio-visual production. The ReInference Unit focuses on research: it supports research projects, the Active Inference Journal, the Active Inference Ontology, knowledge engineering, and the Applied Active Inference Symposium. Both units are led by Facilitators who coordinate project groups, learning activities, and community engagement.
Volunteers, Learners, and Interns are the active participants who power the Institute's day-to-day work. Volunteers contribute across all functions — learning groups, project support, operations, writing, analysis, and media. Learners engage with educational programs at their own pace. Interns participate in structured pathways that develop skills through project contribution and community engagement. All of these roles connect outward to the broader Active Inference Ecosystem.
The Institute sits inside the broader Active Inference Ecosystem — a global network of researchers, practitioners, learners, universities, companies, and collaborators who work with and around Active Inference. The Institute provides Ecosystem Support through communications, education, project facilitation, computational and storage resources, publishing and licensing support, funding discovery, and partnerships. The Ecosystem in turn contributes members, projects, ideas, and feedback that shape the Institute's directions.
Governance network
A public-safe network of governance entities, policies, and processes with their RACI-style relationships. Select a node to trace its accountable, responsible, consulted, and informed links.
Institute structure
Public narrative content describing how the Institute is structured and organized.
The below is the overall (organizational morphology), in terms of internal entities and engagement interfaces with
Responsible for strategic direction, ethics, and high-level guidance.
Functions that enable to operate and serve
Headed by with stewardship of and insights from
Core functions include:
Focused on creating new knowledge, models, and technologies.
Focused on disseminating knowledge, building skills, and fostering community.
Where people and ideas develop.
Fellows and interns may work on within the main divisions or develop new projects within the Incubator.
Key surfaces
Strategic direction and fiduciary oversight.
Day-to-day operational leadership of the Institute.
Expert guidance on research, education, and scientific quality.
Two operational units — one for education, one for research — carry out Institute programs.
Related resources
External links are resolved from the shared registry so visitor-facing destinations stay centralized and checkable.
Audience: Newcomer
Current public landing page for the Institute, including mission, vision, open-science framing, and the Get Started pathway.
Audience: Researcher
Public ecosystem shortlink for Institute context, projects, activities, and conceptual maps.
Audience: Developer
Public GitHub organization for Institute repositories and open-source work.
Audience: Developer
Project repository for multiagent Active Inference modeling work.
Audience: Developer
Generalized Notation Notation project repository for model communication.
Audience: Developer
Geospatial modeling repository connected to ecological and bioregional applications.
Audience: Contributor
Public Project Preparation shortlink for making proposed work legible and actionable.
Audience: Contributor
Public project measurement shortlink for reporting progress and outputs.
Audience: Newcomer
Public Strategy shortlink for institutional orientation and planning context.
Official pages
Audience: Newcomer
Current public Institute landing page with mission, vision, nonprofit status, community metrics, and Get Started pathway.
Audience: Newcomer
Official public homepage for the Active Inference Institute.
Audience: Newcomer
Official strategy and about page for institutional orientation.
Audience: Newcomer
Official history page for the Institute.
Audience: Developer
Official Knowledge Engineering page.
Audience: Developer
Official Active Blockference page.
Audience: Contributor
Official internship page.
Audience: Contributor
Public projects shortlink for project directories and activity-linked work.
Repositories
Audience: Developer
Notebook-based applied Active Inference work connected to blockchain-adjacent and generative modeling examples.
Audience: Developer
Python models and materials for ant-inspired multiagent Active Inference.
Audience: Newcomer
Active Inference Institute organizational website.
Audience: Developer
Public ants repository in the ActiveInferenceInstitute GitHub namespace.
Audience: Developer
ATLAS
Audience: Developer
Public Biofirm repository in the ActiveInferenceInstitute GitHub namespace.
Audience: Developer
Public Bots repository in the ActiveInferenceInstitute GitHub namespace.
Audience: Developer
Python codebase for cognitive and Active Inference-oriented modeling work.