RALPH SNYDERMAN is Chancellor Emeritus, Duke University and James B. Duke Professor of Medicine in the Duke University School of Medicine. He is currently a visiting professor in the Global Health Science Center of the University of California at San Francisco. From 1989 to July 2004, he served as Chancellor for Health Affairs and Dean of the School of Medicine. During this period, he oversaw the development of the Duke University Health System, one of the few fully integrated academic health systems in the country, and served as its Chief Executive Officer. The health system provides not only leading edge care, but is also developing tomorrow’s models of health care delivery.

Dr. Snyderman has been a leading proponent of a new approach to health called “Prospective Care.” This model envisions each individual receiving a personalized health plan based on their own risks and needs. This will give people far more control of and responsibility for their own health as well as opportunities to improve it. Prospective Care combines the best in science and technology with humanistic medical practice and relies on integrative medicine to do this.

Dr. Snyderman is the recipient of numerous honors, including the highest awards in the field of inflammation research, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Arthritis Foundation and the first Bravewell Leadership Award for outstanding achievements in the field of integrative medicine. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine and American Academy of Arts & Sciences, past chair of the Association of American Medical Colleges and immediate past president of the American Association of Physicians.

JOHN F. SHERIDAN is Professor of Immunology and Director of the Comprehensive Training in Oral and Craniofacial Biology program. He currently holds the George C. Paffenbarger Alumni Endowed Research Chair, and is the Associate Director of the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at the Ohio State University.

He received a B.S. degree from Fordham University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University. He did postdoctoral training in microbiology/immunology at the Duke University Medical Center and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He is a founding member and past president of the Psychoneuroimmunology Research Society.

His major research interests include neuroendocrine regulation of gene expression in inflammatory and immune responses, stress-induced susceptibility to infectious disease, viral pathogenesis and host immunity. Current studies seek to define key cellular and molecular mechanisms by which social behavior affects immunity and resistance to infectious disease. To date, these studies have demonstrated the importance of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis in viral pathogenesis, resistance to infectious disease, effectiveness of vaccination, and tissue repair/wound healing.

DAVID S. SHEPS received his M.D. from the University of North Carolina (1969), completed his residency in the Department of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital (1972) and completed a fellowship in cardiology at Yale University School of Medicine (1974). He has an MSPH in Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina (1988).

Dr. Sheps is Professor and Associate Chair in the Division of Cardiology at the University of Florida College of Medicine and is a staff cardiologist at the Gainesville VA Medical Center. He is Director of Nuclear Cardiology at the University of Florida. Effective January 2002, Dr. Sheps was recognized for his accomplishments in behavioral medicine by being appointed as Editor-in-Chief of the Psychosomatic Medicine Journal.

Dr. Sheps is a well-recognized expert in the field of the effects of psychological stress in patients with coronary artery disease and mental stress ischemia and has a strong track record of publications and grants in this area. Dr. Sheps has been principal investigator on numerous grants funded by the NIH, the Health Effects Institute, the US Environmental Protection Agency, and pharmaceutical groups.

ROBERT SAPOLSKY is John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of Biological Sciences, Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University, and is a research associate at the Institute of Primate Research, National Museums of Kenya.

His work is in four broad areas: a) how stress and stress hormones damage the nervous system and compromise the ability of neurons to survive neurological insults; b) the design of gene therapy strategies to save neurons from such insults; c) the design of gene therapy strategies to protect against animal models of psychiatric disorders; d) long-standing studies of wild baboons in East Africa, examining the relationships among dominance rank, social behavior, personality, and patterns of stress-related disease. Sapolsky is the author of 5 books and of some 350 technical papers.

EDWARD D. MILLER was named Chief Executive Officer of Johns Hopkins Medicine, the 13th Dean of The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Vice President for Medicine of The Johns Hopkins University in January 1997. His appointment followed a year-long national search for the first-ever CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine, a new organization which formally integrates operations and planning of the School of Medicine with The Johns Hopkins Health System and Hospital to ensure their continued preeminence in education, discovery and patient care.

He received his A.B. from Ohio Wesleyan University and his M.D. from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. He was a Surgical Intern at University Hospital in Boston, Chief Resident in Anesthesiology at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, and a Research Fellow in Physiology at the Harvard Medical School. In 1981-82, he spent a sabbatical year as Senior Scientist in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology of Hôpital Necker in Paris.

An anesthesiologist who has authored or co-authored more than 150 scientific papers, abstracts and book chapters, Dr. Miller joined Hopkins in 1994 as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, a post he held until May 1999. He was named Interim Dean of the School of Medicine in 1996. He came to Hopkins after eight years at Columbia University in New York, where he served as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology in the College of Physicians and Surgeons.Prior to that, he spent 11 years at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he rose from Assistant Professor to Professor of anesthesiology and surgery and Medical Director of the Surgical Intensive Care Unit. Under his aegis, both The Johns Hopkins Hospital and School of Medicine continue to be ranked among the very best in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, and the School continues to rank at the top in NIH research funding.

Helen S. Mayberg is Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology at Emory University School of Medicine. She received her B.A. in Psychobiology from University of California, Los Angeles and the M.D. degree from the University of Southern California. Following an internship in Internal Medicine at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, and a Residency in Neurology at the Neurological Institute, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, she completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Nuclear Medicine at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Mayberg has held academic positions at Johns Hopkins, the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in San Antonio, and was the first Sandra Rotman Chair in Neuropsychiatry at the Rotman Research Institute and the University of Toronto.

The central theme of her research program is the use of functional neuroimaging methods to define critical neural pathways mediating normal and abnormal mood states in health and disease. Converging findings from a series of studies has led to a neural systems model of major depression. This model provides the foundation for ongoing experiments examining mechanisms of standard antidepressant treatments such as cognitive behavioral therapy and pharmacotherapy as well as development of novel surgical interventions for treatment resistant patients. Since her move in 2004 to Atlanta, these studies have been expanded to further address neurobiological markers predicting treatment response, relapse and resistance as well as depression vulnerability, with a goal towards developing imaging-based algorithms that will discriminate patient subgroups

MARGARET E. KEMENY is Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Health Psychology Program at the University of California San Francisco. After spending her undergraduate years at UC Berkeley, she received her Ph.D. in health psychology from UCSF and completed a four-year post-doctoral fellowship in immunology at UCLA. Dr. Kemeny’s research has focused on identifying the links between psychological factors, the immune system and health and illness. She has made important contributions to our understanding of the ways in which the mind -one’s thoughts and feelings – shapes biological responses to stress and trauma.

Over the past 20 years, she has examined the effects of psychological factors on physiology and disease, particularly HIV infection and inflammation. Her research centers on the impact of cognition and emotion on physiology and health, as well as the effects of psycho logical interventions on cognitive, emotional and physiological responses. She is particularly interested in the impact of social factors on one’s sense of self, self-conscious emotions and physiology.

THOMAS KEATING received his B.A. from Fordham University, and entered the Cistercian Order in Valley Falls, Rhode Island in January 1944. He was appointed Superior of St. Benedict’s Monastery, Snowmass, Colorado in 1958, and was elected abbot of St. Joseph’s Abbey, Spencer, Massachusetts in 1961. He returned to Snowmass after retiring as abbot of Spencer in 1981, where he established a program of ten-day intensive retreats in the practice of Centering Prayer, a contemporary form of the Christian contemplative tradition.

Keating is one of the architects of the Centering Prayer movement begun in Spencer Abbey in 1975 and founder in 1984 of Contemplative Outreach, Ltd., now an international, ecumenical organization that teaches Centering Prayer, Lectio Divina, and the Christian contemplative tradition and provides a support system for those on the contemplative path through a wide variety of resources, workshops, and retreats.

He helped to found the Snowmass Interreligious Conference in 1982 and is a past president of the Temple of Understanding and of the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue among other interreligious activities. He is the author of many books and video/audio tape series. His books include Open Mind, Open Heart, The Mystery of Christ, Invitation to Love, Intimacy with God, The Human Condition, The Better Part, and The Fruits and Gifts of the Spirit.

JOHN J. DeGIOIA became the 48th president of Georgetown University on July 1, 2001. He has served the university both as a senior administrator and a faculty member since 1979. Georgetown University is a distinctive educational institution, rooted in the Catholic faith and Jesuit tradition, and therefore committed to spiritual inquiry, engaged in the public sphere, and invigorated by religious and cultural pluralism.

As the first lay president of a Jesuit university, Dr. DeGioia places special emphasis on sustaining and strengthening Georgetown’s Catholic and Jesuit identity and its responsibility to serve as a voice and an instrument for justice. He is a member of the Order of Malta, a lay religious order of the Roman Catholic Church dedicated to serving the sick and the poor. Dr. DeGioia has been a strong advocate for interreligious dialogue.

To prepare young people for leadership roles in the global community, Dr. DeGioia has expanded opportunities for both interreligious and intercultural dialogue, welcomed world leaders to campus, and convened international conferences to address challenging issues. He is a member of the U.S. National Commission of UNESCO and Chair of its Education Committee, and he represents Georgetown at the World Economic Forum and on the Council on Foreign Relations. Dr. DeGioia remains a Professorial Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, and recently taught “Ethics and Global Development.” He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Georgetown University in 1979 and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University in 1995.

JAN CHOZEN BAYS is a pediatrician specializing in the evaluation of children for possible abuse and neglect. After graduating from Swarthmore College she received medical training at U.C. San Diego. For ten years she served as medical director of the Child Abuse Response and Assessment Center(CARES NW) at Legacy Children’s Hospital in Portland, Oregon where over 1,000 children and families are seen each year for concerns of abuse and neglect. She has written a number of articles for medical journals and also book chapters on aspects of child abuse including substance abuse and child abuse, child abuse by poisoning, and conditions mistaken for child abuse.

Jan Chozen Bays has studied and practiced Zen Buddhism since 1973. She was ordained as a Zen priest under Taizan Maezumi Roshi and given authorization to teach in 1983. With her husband, Hogen Bays, she teaches at Zen Community of Oregon and Great Vow Zen Monastery, a residential center for intensive Zen training in Clatskanie, Oregon. She has published articles about Zen in Tricycle and Buddhadharma magazines. Her book, Jizo Bodhisattva, Modern Healing and Traditional Buddhist Practice (Tuttle Publishing, 2002), has been re-issued in paperback as Jizo Bodhisattva, Guardian of Children, Women and Other Voyagers by Shambhala Publishing.