The Lab
About
Eywal Research Group is an independent research initiative based in Madison, WI. We study intelligence and consciousness as fundamental properties of living matter — not as emergent luxuries of large nervous systems, but as features present at the level of the cell and the collective.
Our intellectual lineage runs through Michael Levin's bioelectricity work at Tufts, Rupert Sheldrake's morphogenetic field hypothesis, and the single-cell biology programs at institutions like the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. We are convinced that the boundary between computation, cognition, and biology is far more porous than consensus science has acknowledged.
This site is a running record of that inquiry — logs of daily reading and observation, and occasional longer reports when a question demands it.
Core Areas
Bioelectricity
Michael Levin's work at Tufts demonstrated that electrical signaling in non-neural tissue governs morphogenesis as directly as genetics does. We study how cells use bioelectric gradients to encode positional information, execute regenerative programs, and coordinate at scale.
Basal Cognition
Cognition does not require a nervous system. Single cells exhibit memory, decision-making, and goal-directedness in ways that challenge the neuron-centric view of mind. We ask what the computational primitives of living matter actually are.
Morphogenetic Fields
Rupert Sheldrake proposed that developmental form is shaped by fields that carry information beyond what is stored in DNA. We treat this as a serious research hypothesis and study the biophysical substrates that could instantiate such fields.
Collective Intelligence
From slime molds to embryos, collectives of cells solve problems that no individual cell could. We study the information-processing architecture of these systems — how local rules give rise to global coherence without a conductor.
Adjacent Areas
Consciousness
The hard problem remains open. We approach it biologically: if cognition exists at the cellular scale, consciousness may be substrate-independent in ways that current neuroscience cannot accommodate. We track the field and maintain our own theoretical position.
Cellular Programming
Inspired by the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub's single-cell atlas work and synthetic biology broadly — what does it mean to write software for a living cell? Optogenetics, xenobots, and programmable morphogenesis are the frontier we monitor.
Optogenetics
Light as a tool for probing and controlling cellular behavior with millisecond precision. We follow this technique both as a research instrument and as evidence for how tightly computation and biology can be coupled.
Mission
"To understand the inner workings of computation within nature — and to follow that question wherever it leads, without regard for the disciplinary lines that currently contain it."