My Ngoc has a background in neuroscience from Harvard University and clinical social work from Simmons University. She has taught mindfulness for over five years in community, healthcare, university, and virtual settings, as well as in English and Vietnamese. Complementing this are several years of coordinating a federally-funded research study on incorporating mindfulness into healthcare and extensive experience working with immigrants and refugees in healthcare and crisis centers. Currently a second year PhD student in Social Work at the University of Denver, her work focuses on expanding mindfulness research into culturally and linguistically diverse populations and for community healing.

Gabriela Torres Platas, holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from McGill University where she studied the implication of glial cells and their inflammatory contribution in depressed suicides. After her doctoral studies, she pursued clinical research training and Co-lead a laboratory at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal where she conducted several clinical trials to study the biological mechanisms of Mindfulness-based interventions when used as a treatment in psychiatric disorders. She is currently pursuing a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University in the Paller Lab in collaboration with the Emory-Tibet Science program, to study the neural correlates of sleep & dream yoga in Chicago and in different Monasteries in India.

Eli Susman is a Ph.D. student in Professor Allison Harvey’s Lab in the clinical science program at UC Berkeley. He graduated from Middlebury in 2018 with a BA in Psychology. Before starting at Berkeley Eli worked as a research coordinator at Harvard in Professor Kate McLaughlin’s Stress and Development Lab. Eli’s passion for clinical science developed over the course of more than a decade working with high-risk youth and young adults in community wilderness therapy in-patient and research settings. Under the mentorship of Professor Harvey Eli aims to develop more efficient accessible and deployable interventions by drawing from the wisdom and science of contemplative practice and the science of habit formation to foster compassion and freedom from human suffering. Eli is a Certified Yoga Teacher Laughter Yoga Leader and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. When not in the lab or clinic he enjoys meditation yoga skiing hiking trail running and contact improvisation.

Natalie Lecy, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of South Dakota and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Her research focuses on mindfulness-based interventions and increasing inclusivity in higher education for first-generation and marginalized students through trauma-informed and student-centered approaches. Natalie has over a decade of experience practicing in clinical and community settings. Through her career she has secured funding for innovative community interventions utilizing collective impact models to leverage local resources. Natalie operates a private practice utilizing mindfulness-based therapy while working primarily with LGBTQI+ populations. She enjoys enhancing her clinical practice through mindfulness-based research and vice versa.

Dr. Hofkens is an Assistant Research Professor at the Center for the Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning at the University of Virginia. In her research, Dr. Hofkens integrates her background in learning science, child development, and stress physiology to study how classroom experiences contribute to children’s academic achievement and psychological wellbeing from early childhood through adolescence. Dr. Hofkens is particularly interested in how contemplative perspectives on stress and engagement could transform teaching and learning in American public schools.

Joe is a clinical psychology PhD student in the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke University. He is mentored by Dr. Moria Smoski. He is interested in translational approaches to studying the effects of mindfulness-based interventions. His other interests include advanced statistical approaches to enhance the measurement of psychopathology and transdiagnostic processes, psychedelic science, and contemplative pedagogy.

Joe graduated from Brown University in 2018 with degrees in Psychology and Contemplative Studies. He is also an alumn of the Emory-Tibet Mind-Body Sciences Program.

Marisa is a PhD candidate in School Psychology at The Pennsylvania State University. There she is a graduate research fellow in The Lab for School-Based Prevention. Her research centers on how contemplative practices may inform pedagogy for socio-emotional development. Currently, Marisa’s work examines contemplative practices as scaffolding for identity development and meaning-making in emerging adolescence. Her research uses innovative technology, like wearables and digital apothecaries, to address issues of implementation and skill transfer. Marisa is a former post-secondary advisor at the secondary level, having served in the College Advising Corp. and former child mindfulness instructor in the elementary school setting.

Dr Kelly Birtwell (she/her) holds a PhD in Primary Care Research from the University of Manchester, UK. She is a chartered psychologist, a person-centred counsellor and a trained mindfulness teacher. For her PhD she developed a brief mindfulness-based intervention to improve wellbeing, using the person-based approach to intervention development. Kelly is interested in meditation safety and making mindfulness more accessible for underserved groups, particularly for people from areas of socioeconomic deprivation and for people who are neurodivergent. Kelly’s research interests have developed through her clinical experience of teaching mindfulness in a range of settings including the English National Health Service, workplace and community settings, and from speaking to autistic people about their experiences of mindfulness. Kelly is currently working on a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Manchester where she is using a ‘realist’ approach to explore how, why, and to what extent mindfulness ‘works’ (or not) for people from areas of socioeconomic deprivation.