Paco 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:

Plants are also sapiens

Andrés Cota Hiriart

He is a zoologist, writer and science communicator. He studied biology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and a master's degree in a scientific documentary at the Imperial College London. He is the author of the books Fieras familiares (finalist I Libros del Asteroide Nonfiction Prize, 2022), El ajolote (Elefanta 3ed., 2024), Faunologías (Festina 2ed., 2024), Cabeza ajena (Moho, 2017) and from the children's book Madam Cuc, la dueña del paraíso (Elefanta, 2023). His texts are found in anthologies and media such as Revista de la Universidad, Gatopardo, Vice, Nexos, Letras Libres, Este_País, Wiered, among others. He has been a member of the National System of Art Creators (2018-2021), a speaker at TEDx and is the founder of the Society of Anonymous Scientists. He is currently the host of the podcast Masaje cerebral; he is a professor of literature at the Higher School of Cinema, and conducts the program Revista de la Universidad, on TV UNAM.

Other activities involving the participant:

The "other people": animals and nature in literature
Psychedelic biology. Secret colors of nature
Axolotl, traces of the little water monster in literature
Kamazootra, the most extravagant modes of reproduction in the animal kingdom

Carlos Ortega Ibarra

PhD in History with a focus on the history of technology from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He is currently a collaborator on the Conversus Radio program, which airs on Radio IPN. He is responsible for the Training Program for the Development of Science and Technology Communication Skills at the Directorate for Science and Technology Dissemination of the National Polytechnic Institute. He has authored over 80 chapters and articles on the history of technology and science communication. In 2016, he received the National Journalism Award in the area of scientific and cultural dissemination.