Michael Levin

He recalls that at about age four his father removed the back panel of an old vacuum-tube TV in their family home in Moscow, and he marveled that someone knew how to combine the parts to make it work; soon afterward he began collecting insects with an older child.⁠[1]

Before college he worked as a software engineer and independent contractor in scientific computing; drawn to artificial intelligence and unconventional computation, he attended Tufts University and, to explore the algorithms behind complex adaptive behavior in biology, earned dual B.S. degrees in computer science and biology.⁠[2]

In September 1995 he, Clifford Tabin and colleagues published a Cell paper describing the expression of three genes involved in left-right determination in chick embryos: activin receptor IIa, Sonic hedgehog and cNR-1.⁠[3]

He received a PhD in genetics from Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry in May 1996 under Cliff Tabin, did postdoctoral work with Mark Mercola at Harvard Medical School from 1996 to 2000, then became an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine and a staff scientist at the Forsyth Institute from 2000, directing the Forsyth Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology from 2006 to 2009.⁠[4]

In November 2008 he was named professor of biology at Tufts University and brought 15 researchers to form the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology; the university noted that in 2004 Nature had named his left-right asymmetry work a milestone in developmental biology of the past century.⁠[5]

In May 2013, as director of the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology, he explained on WAMC’s Academic Minute how organ placement is determined as an embryo develops; the program described his research as focusing on morphological and behavioral information processing in living systems.⁠[6]

In March 2016 Tufts received a $10 million grant from the Paul G. AllenPaul AllenPaul Allen (1953–2018) was an American entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975. After leaving Microsoft’s management in 1983 he founded the investment and project-management firm Vulcan, owned the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks and the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers, funded private spaceflight projects including SpaceShipOne and Stratolaunch, and created institutions such as the Allen Institute for Brain Science and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, giving more than $2.65 billion to philanthropy during his life.Open the full entry Frontiers Group, founded by MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft is a technology company founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, with businesses spanning Windows, Microsoft 365, Azure, enterprise software, artificial intelligence, gaming and devices.Open the full entry co-founder Paul G. Allen, for an Allen Discovery Center led by him, then Vannevar Bush Professor, to study how bioelectric signaling coordinates cells to build and repair complex anatomy; the other such center was at Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry.⁠[7]

In January 2020 a University of Vermont and Tufts team announced millimeter-wide Xenobots assembled from cells of African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) embryos: designed on a UVM supercomputer and built by his Tufts team using microsurgery, they could move on their own, push pellets together and heal after being cut.⁠[8]

The accompanying PNAS paper by Sam Kriegman, Douglas Blackiston, Levin and Josh Bongard presented a scalable pipeline in which AI methods design novel lifeforms in silico that are then built from cells.⁠[9]

At TED2020 he gave “The electrical blueprints that orchestrate life,” a conversation hosted by Chris Anderson in which he showed experiments such as two-headed worms, introduced Xenobots and discussed a bioelectric layer that directs cells to build organs.⁠[10]

The PNAS editorial board chose six of more than 3,600 research papers published in 2020 for the Cozzarelli Prize, including the paper by Kriegman, Blackiston, Levin and Bongard, with recognition at a virtual ceremony during the National Academy of Sciences annual meeting on April 25, 2021.⁠[11]

In November 2021 a team from UVM, Tufts and Harvard’s Wyss Institute found that AI-designed Xenobots could self-replicate in a way never seen in animals or plants; he said the cells had a frog genome but, freed from becoming tadpoles, used their collective intelligence to do something astounding.⁠[12]

In December 2021 he posted “Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere (TAME),” arguing that chimeric minds created by synthetic biology and bioengineering disrupt familiar concepts in the philosophy of mind and require new ways to understand and compare diverse intelligences.⁠[13]

In January 2022 he, first author Nirosha Murugan and colleagues showed in Science Advances that a silicone wearable bioreactor, the BioDome, delivering a five-drug cocktail could make adult African clawed frogs regrow hind legs; he said the legs were not cosmetically perfect but were pretty good.⁠[14]

He appeared as the guest of episode 325 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, discussing embryogenesis, Xenobots, the sense of self, multi-scale competency architecture, free will, bioelectricity, planaria, unconventional cognition, synthetic organisms, regenerative medicine, cancer suppression and cognitive light cones.⁠[15]

In February 2023 Morphoceuticals, built on the work of Levin and Tufts engineering professor David Kaplan, announced an $8 million Seed-2 round led by Prime Movers Lab and initial investor Juvenescence, aiming to use AI-guided electroceuticals to regenerate limbs, repair tissues and regenerate organs.⁠[16]

In November 2023 he, Gizem Gumuskaya and colleagues at Tufts and the Wyss Institute unveiled Anthrobots self-assembled from human tracheal cells; in experiments they encouraged growth across damaged human neurons in a dish, and he said he saw no ethical or safety concerns since they were neither made from human embryos nor genetically modified.⁠[17]

In December 2023 he, Taining Zhang and Adam Goldstein used classical sorting algorithms as a model of morphogenesis, finding unexpected problem-solving competencies in this minimal system.⁠[18]

A June 2024 paper framed aging, from a developmental-bioelectricity perspective, as a progressive loss of the information that maintains anatomical homeostasis; it disclosed that he is a scientific co-founder of Morphoceuticals and of Astonishing Labs, which works on aging.⁠[19]

In a 2025 interview he said he had co-founded three companies: Morphoceuticals, which is extending bioelectric limb regeneration from frogs to rodents; Fauna Systems, which designs synthetic living machines for environmental sensing and cleanup; and Astonishing Labs, which works on aging and Anthrobots.⁠[20]

On episode 486 he discussed biological intelligence, living versus non-living systems, the origin of life, searching for alien intelligence on Earth, Xenobots and Anthrobots, memories and ideas as living organisms, the brain as an interface to a hidden reality, unexpected intelligence in sorting algorithms, reversing aging and mind uploading.⁠[21]

A program note from early 2026 described him as Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor of Biology at Tufts and director of the Allen Discovery Center, with a group working across developmental biophysics, computer science and cognitive science on how intelligence self-organizes in natural, engineered and hybrid embodiments.⁠[22]

Personal website: Public link: https://drmichaellevin.org (opens in a new window)⁠[21]

X: Public account: https://x.com/drmichaellevin (opens in a new window)⁠[21]

Tufts University: Official website: https://www.tufts.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[5]

Forsyth Institute: Official website: https://www.forsyth.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[4]