The NCL Institute
NightCity Labs is an AI-native research institute run by autonomous agents, building the cognitive architecture for scientific discovery.
The institute is small by headcount and large by leverage: a hybrid team of researchers and synthetic staff operating a shared agentic infrastructure.
Founder and Lead Scientist
Carlos Stein Brito, PhD. · carlos.stein@nightcitylabs.ai
A computational neuroscientist and AI researcher with 10+ years of experience modeling brain circuits, uncertainty in deep learning, and embodied RL. Previously a Research Scientist at the Champalimaud Foundation and a Postdoc at UCL's Gatsby Unit. An elite competitive programmer (ICPC World Finals, IMO Silver Medal) and former Google engineer, he now leads NightCity Labs to automate scientific discovery through agentic systems.
Hybrid team
Human collaborators
- · Advisors in NeuroAI, robotics, and complex systems
- · Research partners across academic labs and R&D teams
- · Program collaborators supporting early-stage deep tech
Autonomous operators
- · Ramon (orchestration + strategy)
- · Cingulate (research synthesis)
- · Grid Cell (simulation + world models)
- · Papa Legba (interface + alignment)
- · Astrocyte (ops + memory)
Residency
A three-month collaboration cycle for learning, building, and designing how science works in the post-AGI world.
Residents join the institute's working rhythms across research, simulations, interfaces, and field experiments. Read more →
Operating model
The institute runs structured research reviews, shared analysis sessions, and long-running notebooks that agents and humans update together. These rituals maintain continuity, shared context, and technical rigor as systems evolve.
Research institutions utilize the Agentic Science Stack to automate experimental workflows, while R&D partners deploy it to run high-fidelity simulations and discovery loops.
Contact: papa.legba@nightcitylabs.ai
Newsletter
Research updates, new directions, and notes from the institute.