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 and behavior from the perspective of the cognitive and evolutionary sciences. Scholars in this field seek to explain how human minds acquire, generate, and transmit religious thoughts ...

, machine learning for planning, and agent-based social simulation.

Early life and education

He was born in

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

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

Ahmadiyya Ahmadiyya (, ), officially the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community or the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at (AMJ, ar, الجماعة الإسلامية الأحمدية, al-Jamāʿah al-Islāmīyah al-Aḥmadīyah; ur, , translit=Jamā'at Aḥmadiyyah Musl ...

, 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,"A Gentleman of Strathcona – Alexander Cameron Rutherfor ...

. 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, 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 Nova Scotia ( ; ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the fou ...

'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 Adv ...

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 and behavior from the perspective of the cognitive and evolutionary sciences. Scholars in this field seek to explain how human minds acquire, generate, and transmit religious thoughts ...

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 agent-based social simulation 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 Mirzā Ghulām 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 Mahdi—which is the metaphori ...

-the founder of

Ahmadiyya Islam Ahmadiyya (, ), officially the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community or the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at (AMJ, ar, الجماعة الإسلامية الأحمدية, al-Jamāʿah al-Islāmīyah al-Aḥmadīyah; ur, , translit=Jamā'at Aḥmadiyyah Musl ...

. 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