I
Cognisom
Pioneering multi-scale cellular digital twins to understand and simulate the foundational building blocks of life — from protein folding to whole-cell dynamics.
Read the brief →Advancing Intelligence.
for the benefit of everyone.
An independent research institution at the convergence of biological systems and artificial intelligence. Because in the age of autonomous systems, you matter.
Mission
The Walker–Conway Foundation funds the research, frameworks, and oversight that keep emerging intelligence — biological, artificial, and the systems that connect them — aligned with the benefit of everyone.
We believe that as technology becomes more cognizant and affect-aware, it must be accountable to dignity, safety, and the public record. The Foundation operates outside the commercial cycle — funded by philanthropy, governed by an independent board, and committed to open publication.
Three lines of inquiry,
one ethical frame.
Each program is led by an independent principal investigator and operates under a shared charter: open publication, reproducible methods, and an ethics review with the authority to halt work.
II
Cogs
Developing emotional learning frameworks for humanoid robotics — ensuring that as machines move into our homes and clinics, the interaction is safe, empathetic, and human-led.
Read the brief →III
AI Watch Lab
Establishing rigorous liability testing and certification frameworks for the secure adoption of enterprise and agentic AI — accountability at the level institutions can rely on.
Read the brief →The non-negotiables.
These four commitments are written into the Foundation's charter and reviewed annually by an external ethics board. They are conditions of receiving Foundation support, not aspirations.
All foundation-funded research is published open-access. Methods, data, and negative results are shared on a defined cadence — not when convenient.
Commercial entities founded or held by foundation principals are disclosed in full and walled off from grant decisions through an independent ethics review.
The foundation accepts no funding that conditions a research outcome. Donor influence ends at the moment of the gift.
Every research initiative is evaluated against a single durable test: does it expand the conditions for human flourishing, or merely human consumption?
Building the conditions for intelligence that benefits everyone takes a generation.
We welcome inquiries from academic partners, philanthropic funders, and independent researchers whose work intersects with the Foundation's charter.