Hello! I’m Alejandro Hernandez and I love to explore how AI helps us understand the outer universe as well as the inner one: the human brain.
I’m mainly attracted to the intersection of AI and creativity, the bidirectional exploration of how AI can help us understand the human creative process and how studying human creativity can, in turn, enhance AI capabilities. I believe the best way to truly understand something is by building it yourself, and maybe the same holds true for both creativity and the human brain!
In my family, there were no scientists, but rather it was filled with artists! However, instead of following their path, I chose a different route. What truly fascinated me was understanding how people create artifacts from their experiences, emotions, and associations of ideas. Especially, I was intrigued by our ability to bring these elements together in complex dynamics and combinations, transforming them into powerful and incredibly diverse artifacts, each capable of addressing different tasks: from solving complex problems and discovering new knowledge about the universe to evoking deep emotions, from laughter to tears, that connect us with ourselves and each other.
I have worked as a Research Assistant at CSIC, Spain’s leading research organization, where I studied the relation on how artificial neural networks and the human brain store and associate concepts under the supervision of (Prof. Jesús Marco de Lucas. Later, I worked at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Iyad Rahwan’s team in my Master’s thesis about the intersection of AI and creativity. I was supervised by Niki Kilbertus (Technical University of Munich). The thesis was presented at the Technical University of Munich, where it received the highest grade (1.0) and was also featured at the NeurIPS 2024 Workshop on Creativity and Generative AI.
Outside of my technical work, I’m passionate about creative writing, literature, cinema, video games and opera. I love exploring topics that interest me, usually broad philosophical questions, through writing. I enjoy examining these ideas both through research-based essays and by embedding them as underlying themes into fictional stories. In particular, I try to connect ideas from AI or Computer Science with the books I’m reading. As you can probably tell, building conceptual bridges is what I enjoy most ;)