Muhammad Afzal Upal is a writer and a cognitive scientist with contributions to

cognitive science of religion Cognitive science of religion is the study of religious thought, theory, and behavior from the perspective of the cognitive sciences. Scholars in this field seek to explain how human minds acquire, generate, and transmit religious thoughts, pract ...

, machine learning for planning, and

agent-based social simulation Agent-based social simulation (or ABSS) consists of social simulations that are based on agent-based modeling, and implemented using artificial agent technologies. Agent-based social simulation is a scientific discipline concerned with simulation ...

Early life and education

He was born in

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

with 2 sisters and 3 brothers. His family emigrated to Canada because

Ahmadiyya Ahmadiyya, officially the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at (AMJ), is an Islamic messianic movement originating in British India in the late 19th century. It was founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908), who said he had been divinely appointed a ...

, the form of Islam they practiced, was discriminated against in Pakistan. For his PhD research, he worked under the supervision of Professor Renee Elio at the

University of Alberta The University of Alberta (also known as U of A or UAlberta, ) is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta, and Henry Marshall Tory, t ...

. In December 1999, he successfully defended his thesis on "Learning to Improve the Quality of Plans Produced by Partial-order Planners".

Leadership

He was chair of the First International Workshop on Cognition and Culture, the 14th Annual Conference of the North American Association for Computational, Social, and Organizational Sciences, and the AAAI-06 Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Agent-based Social Simulation.

Professional career

In July 1999, Upal was hired as a tenure-track assistant professor of computer science at

Dalhousie University Dalhousie University (commonly known as Dal) is a large public research university in Nova Scotia, Canada, with three campuses in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Halifax, a fourth in Bible Hill, Nova Scotia, Bible Hill, and a second medical school campus ...

's new Faculty of Computer Science. In 2001, he moved to Information Extraction & Transport (IET) Inc. to work as a senior scientist on various

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adva ...

Scientific contributions

He has contributed to research areas of Cognition & Culture and

Cognitive science of religion Cognitive science of religion is the study of religious thought, theory, and behavior from the perspective of the cognitive sciences. Scholars in this field seek to explain how human minds acquire, generate, and transmit religious thoughts, pract ...

through the development of the Context-based model of minimal counterintuiveness. In a 2005 article in the '' Journal of Cognition and Culture'', he proposed a cognitive science of new religious movements. Upal has also pioneered a knowledge-rich

technique for simulating the development of complex cultural beliefs. In 2017, his book ''Moderate Fundamentalists: Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at in the lens of cognitive science of religion'', was published by DeGruyter Press. The book uses Context-based model of minimal counterintuiveness to explain counterintuitive claims of new religious movement founders such as

Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (13 February 1835 – 26 May 1908) was an Indian religious leader and the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement in Islam. He claimed to have been divinely appointed as the promised Messiah and '' Mahdī'', in fulfillment of th ...

-the founder of

Ahmadiyya Islam Ahmadiyya, officially the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at (AMJ), is an Islamic messianic movement originating in British India in the late 19th century. It was founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908), who said he had been divinely appointed a ...

. He co-edited the Brill Handbook of Islamic Sects & Movements with Professor Carole M. Cusack.M. A. Upal and C. M. Cusack (2021) Brill Handbook of Islamic Sects and Movements, Leiden: Brill

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Upal, Afzal Canadian cognitive scientists Canadian computer scientists Artificial intelligence researchers University of Toledo faculty Living people 1970 births Pakistani emigrants to Canada