QRI Research Revealed: From Theory to Consciousness Engineering (2026 Fundraiser)

23 Dec 2025, 19:47 by algekalipso · Qualia Computing

The Qualia Research Institute is fundraising $1.5M to carry out its 2026 research program. This is the video of our fundraiser presentation delivered on November 20th 2025 at the 16th floor of San Francisco’s Frontier Tower. We make the case that for cutting-edge consciousness research and suffering reduction initiatives, QRI is a top organization in terms of cost-effectiveness.

In this video, Cube Flipper presents on QRI’s think tank approach to psychedelic research over the past few years, including our work on modeling phenomenology using principles from non-linear optics and the launching of heart.qri.org. Andrés Gómez Emilsson then covers QRI’s current most promising research paradigms, recent empirical findings on characterizing dynamic system changes from pharmacological agents, and the vision for the organization’s strategic plan through 2026.

Endorsements of QRI

Scott Alexander: “I do think QRI is amazing. I’m proud to be here. If you’re going to understand consciousness, you need a very rare combination: being brilliant, erudite, focused — and extremely crazy. QRI sits exactly in that sweet spot. And if anyone is going to do it, they are.”

Shamil Chandaria: “QRI is a creative and first principles consciousness research group. Their original and pioneering approach is opening new territory in the field and is exactly the kind of fresh and insightful research that is needed. I always feel inspired by their ideas and have an intuition it will be these bold ideas that will help to make genuine progress in understanding the nature of consciousness.”

Daniel Ingram: “I flew in basically just to be here. I had this feeling that there was something really important with you all gathering — with this energy — for this incredible work, this foundational, fundamental work that QRI is doing. What absolutely blows my mind is how cleanly mathematics — topology, Fourier transforms, linear algebra, frequencies, phase — maps onto deep meditative and psychedelic experience. I’ve been dreaming of this for decades. To see this actually being done, to see real mathematical formalization applied to consciousness, is a dream come true for me. I really think this is how you reach the mainstream. The mainstream will appreciate this — even if it takes time — and it has to understand this if this work is going to scale. So please support QRI. Please support this work that they are doing.”

Christine Peterson: “It’s been my privilege to watch the Qualia Research Institute from very early on, and I’ve been astounded by the level of creativity in this research program. There is nobody else out there doing this kind of work, and it’s hard to imagine something more important. This is how we are going to learn to quantify consciousness, valence, emotional states — how to eliminate truly intense pain, and how to explore the highest levels of human happiness. What’s extraordinary is that QRI is doing this with a tiny team and an extraordinarily small budget. When you see the quality of this research and hear what the budget is, you honestly wonder how it’s even possible. This organization deserves at least a million dollars a year. They know how to squeeze every penny and generate enormous value. This is the great adventure — and this is the moment to step up.”

Chris Percy: “In the academic world I usually work in, people are lucky to have one or two big ideas a year. Andrés has one or two big ideas every month — and QRI now has an enormous backlog of ideas waiting to be developed.”

Matthew Baggott: “I’ve been interested in and working on psychedelics since the 1980s. When I was an undergrad, I didn’t understand why no one was studying these experiences seriously. What always struck me is that we need people who can do careful self-experimentation, observe very precisely, and then make formal models of what’s going on. That is the way forward. A lot of breakthroughs in science and medicine have come from self-experimentation — it’s overrepresented among Nobel Prize winners. So it’s been an honor and a pleasure to see the work at QRI develop over the months and years. Please give them all the support you can. It’s going to make a difference.”

Balázs Szigeti: “The way I came into psychedelics was through a project called the self-blinding microdose study. It was a citizen-science project, and the results showed that microdosing is not better than placebo. That made me extremely unpopular in psychedelic research. But the moral of the story — and how it relates to QRI — is that the self-blinding microdose study started as this weird, funky citizen-science initiative. It was outside of the system, but it tried to say something about what the system really cares about. And I see QRI as something similar: this weird, eclectic, outside-the-system thing. I’m not sure where it’s going, but it’s going somewhere — and I think it’s going to be awesome. What they are doing is really, really unique, and it is just the way forward for this field.”

What’s happening at QRI: We’re moving our theoretical work (Coupling Kernels, Neural Field Annealing, Valence Structuralism) into practical applications: consciousness engineering, incubating startups, and working on alignment problems. This video shows data-driven empirical validation of the Coupling Kernel paradigm with solid preliminary results. Expect QRI in 2026 to deliver peer reviewed papers validating core research threads and concrete technologies that ease pain, enhance baseline wellbeing, and facilitate access to therapeutic extremes of positive valence. Ideas that were on Qualia Computing back in 2016 are now appearing in philosophy-of-mind journals and making waves. This is just the beginning! 🙂

Video Timestamps:

0:01 – Introduction & Christine Peterson
5:08 – Scott Alexander
6:34 – Matthew Baggott.
8:32 – Cube Flipper
1:08:52 – Daniel Ingram
1:14:09 – Balázs Szigeti
1:16:10 – Chris Percy
1:30:22 – Andrés Gómez Emilsson
3:00:11 – Q&A Session
3:13:29 – Community Introductions

About QRI

QRI is a nonprofit think tank and R&D lab studying consciousness. We run retreats studying high-energy states (https://heart.qri.org) where we rapidly prototype experiments and tools. Our approach incorporates physics, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and psychophysics.

Careers: https://qri.org/careers

HEART: https://heart.qri.org/get-involved

Oscilleditor: https://qri.org/oscilleditor

ClusterFree (Alfredo Parra) – Advocating for DMT as cluster headache treatment: https://clusterfree.org (see: 12+ Reasons to Donate to ClusterFree)

Computational Functionalism Debate (Chris Percy) – Digital sentience debate quiz: https://cf-debate.com/quiz/

Thank you to Taru Hirvonen, Till Holzapfel, Scry and Symmetric Vision for their work on prototypes of our Tactile Visualizer, and to Emil Hall, Taru Hirvonen, and Symmetric Vision for their development efforts on Oscilleditor.

https://QRI.org | / discord

Blogs: https://qualiacomputing.com/ | https://smoothbrains.net/

Substack: substack.com/@andrsgmezemilsson