Peter Wayne, PhD, is a researcher and practitioner in the field of mind-body and integrative medicine. Dr. Wayne is the Bernard Osher Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS), and the Director of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, jointly based at HMS and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is also the Founding Director of the Tree of Life Tai Chi Center in Boston and a Mind & Life Fellow.
Laura Schmalzl is an associate professor at Southern California University of Health Sciences, where she teaches neuroscience, research methods, and yoga foundations for healthcare professionals. Laura initially trained as a clinical neuropsychologist before completing a Ph.D. in cognitive science and post-doctoral work in cognitive neuroscience as well as behavioral medicine. Alongside her academic work, she is also a dedicated yoga practitioner and longtime yoga instructor. Much of Laura’s research over the past years evolved around the development and scientific evaluation of yoga interventions for both clinical and healthy populations. Broadly speaking, her research interests lie in furthering our understanding of the mechanisms through which yoga-based practices can impact cognitive functioning, body awareness, and emotional self-regulation. Laura is also editor in chief of the “International Journal of Yoga Therapy.”
Alisa Dennis discovered meditation through her study of metaphysics and ancient Christian mystical traditions. She practiced within the S.N. Goenka tradition of Vipassana, then studied mindfulness through the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. She completed a multiyear, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction training related to integrating contemplative practices into psychotherapy. Alisa also completed residential training in the Zen Soto tradition. Alisa values the unifying and integrating power of Insight practice and its capacity to reconnect us to our natural capacity to meet the moments of our lives with kindness, openness, and flexibility. Alisa is a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice in the Los Angeles area. She offers mindfulness and self-compassion trainings at corporations and community-based organizations. She is in the current Spirit Rock Teacher Training Program and both assists and leads residential retreats and daylong programs. Alisa has explored many other spiritual traditions. Her work with indigenous shamans has supported her development of a multidimensional consciousness and has deepened and broadened the matrices through which she understands the nature of human existence.
Anil Seth is professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex and founding co-director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science. His research group investigates the biological basis of consciousness by bringing together research across neuroscience, mathematics, artificial intelligence, computer science, psychology, philosophy, and psychiatry. He is specifically interested in how conscious perceptions of the world and of the self can be understood through the lens of the “predictive brain.” He has published over 150 academic papers and edited the best-selling popular science book 30 Second Brain. Anil is editor-in-chief of the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness (Oxford University Press), a Senior Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and a Wellcome Trust Engagement Fellow. He was the 2017 president of the British Science Association (Psychology Section), and his 2017 TED talk has been viewed over 6.5 million times.
Anil is featured in the Mind & Life podcast episode How our minds predict our reality.
john a. powell is Director of the Othering and Belonging Institute and Professor of Law, African American, and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He was previously the Executive Director at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at the Ohio State University, and prior to that, the founder and director of the Institute for Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota. john formerly served as the National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He is a co-founder of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council and serves on the boards of several national and international organizations. john led the development of an “opportunity-based” model that connects affordable housing to education, health, health care, and employment and is well-known for his work developing the frameworks of “targeted universalism” and “othering and belonging” to effect equity-based interventions. john has taught at numerous law schools including Harvard and Columbia University. His latest book is Racing to Justice: Transforming our Concepts of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society.
john was featured in the Mind & Life podcast episode Othering and belonging.
Tanya Marie Luhrmann is the Watkins University Professor at Stanford University, in the Stanford Anthropology Department. Her work focuses on the edge of experience: on voices, visions, the world of the supernatural, and the world of psychosis. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003 and received a John Guggenheim Fellowship award in 2007. When God Talks Back was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year. It was awarded the $100,000 Grawemeyer Prize for Religion. She has published over 30 op-eds in The New York Times, and her work has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Science News, and many other publications. Her new book, Our Most Troubling Madness: Schizophrenia and Culture, was published by the University of California Press in October 2016.
Tanya was featured in the Mind & Life podcast episode How social worlds shape our minds.
Yoona Kang’s research investigates psychological and neural mechanisms that support the development and changes in social cognition, emotions, and health outcomes. Her main research interests are in 1) linking social cognitive and affective processing in the brain to health outcomes across various developmental stages, and 2) designing intervention strategies that guide adaptive changes in social processing to promote emotional and physical well-being. Yoona’s work draws conceptual and methodological tools from psychology, cognitive neuroscience, contemplative science, and health communication. She examines converging evidence across a wide range of tools, including first-person reports, implicit measures, behavioral outcomes, and neuroimaging data (fMRI, fNIRS, EEG). Yoona received her B.A. in psychology from UCLA and Ph.D. in psychology from Yale University.
Dr. Chang is a licensed clinical psychologist and Associate Professor in the NYU Silver School of Social Work. Her research seeks to advance the well-being of BIPOC communities by understanding the processes that impact psychological health, identifying strategies for improving intergroup relationships, and developing culturally-grounded interventions that integrate mindfulness and other contemplative traditions to promote racial equity. She is the recipient of a Mind and Life PEACE grant to develop and evaluate Mindfulness-Based Critical Consciousness Training for teachers (MBCC-T) in New York City to strengthen their culturally-responsive teaching practice. A second-generation Chinese American, Dr. Chang also conducts research on key issues facing Asian American communities, most recently examining Asian Americans’ experiences of discrimination since the Covid-19 pandemic, and the role that critical consciousness, solidarity and allyship with other BIPOC communities may play in promoting more resilient coping with structural racism. Her research has been profiled on ABC News, CNN, 20/20, NPR and the New York Times. She is a founding member and Executive Board member of the International Society for Contemplative Research. Dr. Chang also maintains a private practice in New York City through the Soho CBT + Mindfulness Center.
Learn more about her work here.
Doris was featured on the Mind & Life podcast episode Critical Consciousness.
Amit Bernstein (Co-Chair), PhD, is a Professor of Psychology, Director of the Observing Minds Lab at the University of Haifa, and member of the Israel Young Academy. Amit is interested in how wellbeing and suffering are impacted by the ways in which we process, experience and respond to our internal states, and thereby, how mindfulness and mental training may be used therapeutically.His team is currently studying the nature and function of attention in mental health, the salutary and curative properties and mechanisms of mindfulness, and the therapeutic translation of this work to care for vulnerable refugee populations. In his most important and rewarding job, he is Yonatan’s, Noga’s and Mia’s father.Amit is a Mind & Life Fellow and served as faculty for SRI 2019.
After graduating on General and Comparative Literature, I completed my PhD on the literary expressions of contemplative practice, studying how philosophical and psychological influences from Hindu and Buddhist practices become written works in contemporary authors.
I completed my studies with a Postgraduate Diploma in Buddhist Studies from South Wales University (UK) and a Postgraduate Course on Mindfulness-based Interventions at Stellenbosch University (South Africa). I am currently completing another postgraduate course from the University of the Witwatersrand on Higher Education. This is the framework in which I developed the pilot program that is at the base of this Varela grant research project.
In 2014, I decided to explore the application of contemplative practice into the corporate and educational environment. For the first role, I founded Veluvana, an online platform to teach mindfulness in Spanish. For the second role, I trained as a certified ‘b program’ facilitator (Mindfulness in Schools Project) and co-created MindEdu, to implement mindfulness practices in Education.
