Acer (Yu-Chan) Chang

Acer Chang’s project seeks a scientific understanding of consciousness: what it is, what it does, and how it arises from physical systems. He bridges rigorous theory with lived experience by using tools from information theory to formalise core features of phenomenology, such as unity, differentiation, and a sense of self. He connects these ideas to data through cognitive and computational neuroscience, combining behavioural experiments, brain imaging, and large-scale modelling to assess when and how conscious states change. A second strand of his research asks what this tells us about intelligence more broadly. By comparing biological brains with artificial and collective systems, Chang examines which informational principles are shared across organisms, AI models, and groups, and which are uniquely human. At its core, the project is deeply interdisciplinary, drawing on philosophy of mind, cognitive science, neuroscience, and AI to build shared concepts and methods. It links centuries old philosophical inquiry about the mind to contemporary information theoretic models.