Dr. Sam Kriegman is an Assistant Professor of computer science, chemical and biological engineering, and mechanical engineering at Northwestern University. His lab aims to bring AI — and more broadly ALife — out of the digital realm of bits and pixels and into the real world as engineered organisms, cyborgs, and inorganic beings of diverse size, shape, material, and niche.

As a 2024 Berggruen Fellow, Kriegman is investigating general theories of life, in which the details of carbon-based organisms would represent a special case. Without access to a time machine or the means of interstellar travel, Kriegman and his students will instead design, build, and breed, robotic lifeforms to catch a glimpse of life as it may have arisen here on Earth or as it might exist elsewhere in the universe. Kriegman is contributing to the Future Humans projects Embodied Machines, What Will Life Become?, and Life, Otherwise.