Born in Brazil, Wagner had the opportunity to work on a oil-pipeline quality control robot at the University of São Paulo. With the will to improve them by the means of artificial intelligence, he studied biochemistry at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. There, he joined the lab of Prof. Alexander Gottschalk in 2008, in the wake of light control of biological neurons by optogenetics. Wagner applied multiple methods to uncover a decision-making pathway in the neuronal network of the nematode C. elegans. The insights from contemporary neuroscience research address major shortcomings from current machine learning algorithms. Currently, he is translating this knowledge into computable processes. He envisions an artificial general intelligence where topology, multiple signal transduction pathways, system criticality, sleep and even death are necessary for active inference.