A Chat with Information Scientist Pedro Marijuán

PEDRO CLEMENTE MARIJUÁN While there is still no scientific consensus on what "life" is -- although that does not deter attempts to make life in the lab -- there is a growing conversation among scientists about life's "information" component. However, scientists also find it difficult articulating just what information is. So I phoned information scientist Pedro Clemente Marijuán in Spain to explore the subject. Marijuán's current research interests include "the nature of intelligence and the nature of information, at the molecular-cellular and organismic (brain) levels." Pedro Marijuán is Senior Research Scientist at Spain's Aragon Institute of Health Sciences (IACS) where he heads the Bioinformation Group. He has also served as IACS Research Director (2011-2015). In 1991, Marijuán co-founded FIS (Foundations of Information Science) with theoretical biologist Michael Conrad. Marijuán says one of the missions of FIS is "organizing a sound body of new thinking about the informational cohesion of the physical, biological and social realms" of science. He is also Vice-President for Protocol of the International Society for Information Studies (IS4SI). Pedro Marijuán's professional career began as an industrial engineer in the 1970s in Spain, working with computers in "enterprise organization," after receiving his undergraduate degree in engineering from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. Later inspired by John von Neumann's ideas, Marijuán began his own inv...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news