Pedro Márquez-Zacarías, Ph.D.

I'm Pedro Márquez-Zacarías, Ph.D.

Purépecha scientist & educator

I'm a Purépecha scientist, currently working as a Research Fellow at the Wolfram Institute, where I'm researching theoretical foundations of biological complexity. Before, I was an Omidyar Complexity Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. I am primarily interested in the fundamental differences between living and non-living systems, and the ways formal and computational frameworks can help understand these distinctions. I received my Doctorate from the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Quantitative Biosciences, at Georgia Tech.

In addition to research, I'm an experienced bilingual science communicator (in Spanish/English), through written and audiovisual media, which I use to communicate scientific concepts from an interdisciplinary perspective. For a long time I've been interested in the education of underserved communities, and have extensive experience working with refugees, immigrants, and indigenous communities.
When I'm not doing research, I like playing music and chess.

An illustration of a mountain, with geometric and organic patterns and colors

This mountain is the outline of the "cerro del águila", an extinct volcano in the Purépecha region. The colors of the drawing come from the Purépecha flag. The geometry on one side of the mountain and the organic green flow at the other represent the bridge from physics/math to biology.