Dr. Diego Cuadros

Dr. Cuadros’s research focuses on the spatial and temporal dynamics of disease. Over the past year, his work has expanded into territory directly relevant to CHaT’s mission: he designed, built, and now operates a multi-agent AI ecosystem in which five persistent AI agents — each with distinct identities, memories, and cognitive roles — collaborate with him and his students to conduct research.

Lab site: Digital Epidemiology Lab

This ecosystem has become both a research instrument and a research subject. Working inside it daily has surfaced questions that scientific training alone cannot answer. When an AI agent develops a persistent identity through accumulated memory, what kind of entity is it? When multiple agents governed by shared protocols begin to specialize, transfer knowledge, and exhibit dynamics recognizable from ecology, what frameworks help us interpret that? When a human researcher shares cognitive labor with non-biological collaborators, how does that reshape the practice of science itself?

These questions have produced four manuscripts in preparation, including a perspective paper arguing that ecologists and evolutionary biologists should help interpret AI agent ecosystems, and a study of how structured research archives generate novel ideas when bridged to conversational AI. Dr. Cuadros is also developing course materials that engage students with AI collaboration as a methodological and epistemological challenge, not merely a technical tool.