© Lina BoteroPaco Calvo
Invitado de Honor
Professor of Philosophy of Science and the principal investigator at the Minimal Intelligence Laboratory (MINT Lab) at the Universidad de Murcia (Spain). He specialized in the philosophy of cognitive science through a Fulbright scholarship in the late 90s (University of California, San Diego) and earned his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Glasgow in 2000.
His research interests broadly encompass cognitive sciences, with a special focus on plant intelligence, ecological psychology, and embodied cognitive science. His papers have appeared in Annals of Botany, Biology & Philosophy; The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science; Cognitive Science; Journal of the Royal Society, Plant, Cell & Environment; Plant Signaling & Behavior, and Trends in Plant Science, among other journals. He also co-edited the Handbook of Cognitive Science:An Embodied Approach (2008, Elsevier), the Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology (2009, Routledge) and The Architecture of Cognition (2014, MIT Press).
At MINT Lab, his research relies on time-lapse photography to observe plants’ navigational abilities and explore the theoretical foundations of various interpretations of adaptive plant behavior. Currently, Paco Calvo is funded by the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation to investigate how to mitigate plant jet lag in common beans with phytomelatonin and to gather behavioral evidence of plant sentience. His research has also been funded by the Office of Naval Research-Global.
In 2016, he received funding from Spain's Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sports for a sabbatical stay at the EIDYN Research Centre and the Institute of Molecular Plant Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, where he began work on his book Planta Sapiens with Natalie Lawrence (2023, Seix Barral).
Other activities involving the participant:
Panel 4: The Communication of Science
FIL Program 
