Dr. Sara Konrath directs the Interdisciplinary Program for Empathy and Altruism Research (iPEAR). Her research tracks changes over time in empathy and related traits in American young adults, and examines potential implications of digital technology for empathy. She has developed digital empathy-building tools for youth (Text to Connect; Random App of Kindness), and has created other empathy-training programs for other groups (e.g., teachers, physicians, museums, nonprofits). Konrath has published dozens of papers in top scientific journals, writes a popular Psychology Today blog, and her research has been featured in national and international media. She is an Associate Professor at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
Dr. Emily Weinstein is a longtime senior researcher (and soon-to-be Project Director) at Project Zero and a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. At Project Zero, she leads a suite of projects keyed to studying young people’s digital lives and re-imagining digital well-being. Dr. Weinstein has spent over a decade chasing answers to questions about what it’s like to grow up with smartphones and social media. She also has a longtime commitment to directly supporting schools and families, including through her work with Common Sense on digital citizenship.
Polina is a PhD Candidate in Social Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University, working with Dr. Kirk Warren Brown at the Wellbeing Lab. Originally from Russia, she served as Research Assistant at the Positive Psychology of Personality and Motivation Lab (Moscow, Russia), VIA institute on Character (Cincinnati, Ohio), and Decision Neuroscience Lab (Richmond, Virginia). Polina’s research interests lie in the intersection of contemplative science and positive psychology, with a special focus on how mindfulness practice affects our social and emotional well-being. In her free time, Polina enjoys reading and taking walks around Richmond.
Erika Díaz-Almeyda, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies at New College of Florida. She holds a Ph.D. in Biology at The Pennsylvania State University focusing on understanding the thermal acclimation of microbial symbionts of corals. She did a postdoctoral fellowship focusing on host microbe interactions in agricultural settings at Emory University. As a microbial ecologist her research interests are at the nexus of symbiosis, climate change, and Indigenous and sustainable practices. She studies how host-associated microbiota are affected by climate change, and the relationships between microbial diversity and land/water management.
Dr. Jyoti Mishra is a cognitive and computational neuroscientist, with expertise in studies of attention, learning and brain plasticity, as well as digital health therapeutics. She is the founder and director of the Neural Engineering and Translational Labs (NEATLabs) and is an Associate Professor in the department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego. NEATLabs innovates scalable human-centered mental health technologies and applies these in diverse local and global communities to help address important societal challenges – these include impacts of climate change on mental health and innovating social resiliency solutions in this context. In related teaching and service, Dr. Mishra co-directs the UC system-wide Climate Change and Mental Health Initiative.
Dennis Muñoz Vergara, DVM, MS, MPH is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and a mind-body movement therapies (MBMT) researcher. He is also a yoga instructor, a practice he has cultivated since he was pursuing a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree specializing in Animal Pathology in southern Chile. In 2016, he pursued a postdoctoral opportunity at Harvard Medical School (HMS), within the Osher Center’s Connective Tissue Laboratory. His research focuses on the effect of body stretching in acute and chronic myofascial inflammation. In 2017, he successfully applied to the NCCIH-funded T32 program (HMS Research Fellowship in Integrative Medicine). During this fellowship, he completed a program in Clinical Effectiveness and obtained an MPH degree from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His current research involves a translational pilot RCT examining the systemic inflammatory impact of a single bout of yogic exercise among yoga-naïve and sedentary adults. His long-term goal is to develop a clinical model for studying the intersection between the immune and myofascial systems and the benefits of yoga for health and disease. He loves to cook and dance with his husband, family, and friends. He also cultivates his writings of poetry and short stories with a group of Chilean writers and associates.
Lindsay Romano (she/her) is a third year PhD student at New York University. She studies how mindfulness- and compassion-based practices can be used as tools for social justice in education. Her work explores how the cultivation of cognitive and emotional capacities in educators (e.g., attention regulation, mindfulness, compassion) can influence positive social change in the classroom by addressing issues such as bias and dis/ability and racial injustices. Lindsay is a former high school Special Education teacher and plans to conduct her research in service of identifying practical and applicable mindfulness-based instructional strategies to share with school communities.
Dr. Matthew D. Sacchet, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Meditation Research Program at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Sacchet is an established expert in meditation and mental health research. His background includes leading teams to conduct innovative and complex studies, employing advanced research methods, studying meditation and mental health, and publishing in leading academic journals. Since 2012, he has authored over 85 publications, and his work has been presented over 125 times at international, national, regional, and local conferences and in speaker series, and cited over 5,000 times. He has received funding from primary federal funding bodies in the United States (including the National Science Foundation [NSF] and National Institutes of Health [NIH]), his work has been covered by major media (including CBS, NBC, NPR, Time, and The Wall Street Journal), and Forbes named him as one of its “30 Under 30.” Dr. Sacchet is an Associate Editor of the academic journal Mindfulness. He completed a self-designed bachelor’s degree in Contemplative Studies (uniting meditation and neuroscience) at Brown University and was then research staff at Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of Tübingen, before completing a Ph.D. and postdoctoral position at Stanford University. Prior to joining Mass General in May 2022, Dr. Sacchet was faculty and a director of research at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Shufang Sun is an Assistant Professor at Brown University School of Public Health. Her research focuses on addressing minority stress and mental health among marginalized communities through innovative, evidence-based methods, particularly via mHealth and mindfulness. Specific to mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs), her work has primarily focused on using systematic review and meta-analytic methods to understand the effectiveness of MBIs across various populations, as well as the utility of MBI for disease prevention and management. With various NIH grants support, her work has concerned racial, sexual, and gender minorities in the U.S. and globally. Dr. Sun is a meditation practitioner and licensed psychologist.
Dr Sam Roberts is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Liverpool John Moores University, UK. His educational and research background is multi-disciplinary, including a Bachelor’s degree in Human Sciences from the University of Oxford, a Master’s degree in Evolutionary Psychology and a PhD which focused on primate social cognition. Building on this diverse background, his research focuses on communication and social relationships in both primates and humans. Because humans are social animals, the nature of our social ties is an important determinant of both our physical health and mental well-being. Dr Roberts’ research thus focuses on people’s social networks – the set of relationships they have with family and friends. He examines how communication patterns relate to these social relationships, how they change over time and how they are related to well-being. As online interaction has become increasingly important in forming and maintaining relationships, he is also studying how using social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram affect both social networks and well-being. He has conducted longitudinal studies tracking how social networks change over time and used ‘big data’ from mobile phone communication to examine how fine-grained patterns of communication are associated with changes in people’s social networks.
