JOHN TEASDALE received his first degree in psychology from the University of Cambridge. Subsequently, he studied for his Ph.D. in abnormal psychology, and trained as a clinical psychologist, at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, where he then taught for a number of years. After working as a National Health Service clinical psychologist in the University Hospital of Wales, he began a thirty year period of full- time research, supported by the Medical Research Council, first in the Department of Psychiatry, Univeristy of Oxford, subsequently in the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge.
The continuing focus of this research has been the investigation of basic psychological processes and the application of that understanding to the relief of emotional disorders. Initially this involved the development and evaluation of behavioral therapies for anxiety disorders, subsequently the exploration of cognitive approaches to understanding and treating major depression, and, most recently, the development of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, a program that is effective in substantially reducing future risk of major depression through an integration of mindfulness training and cognitive approaches.
Dr. Teasdale has published more than a hundred scientific papers and chapters, and co-authored three books. He has received a Distinguished Scientist Award from the American Psychological Association, and has been elected Fellow of both the British Academy and the Academy of Medical Sciences. He is currently retired, pursuing personal interests in meditation and mindfulness training.
ESTHER M. STERNBERG received her M.D. and Rheumatology training at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, and was on the faculty at Washington University, St. Louis, MO, before joining the National Institutes Health in 1986. Currently Chief of the Section on Neuroendocrine Immunology and Behavior at the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Sternberg is also Director of the Integrative Neural Immune Program, NIMH/NIH and Co- Chair of the NIH Intramural Program on Research in Women’s Health.
Dr. Sternberg is internationally recognized for her discoveries in brain-immune interactions and the brain’s stress response in diseases including arthritis: the science of the mind-body interaction. She publishes numerous original scientific articles, reviews and textbook chapters in leading scientific journals and authored the popular book The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions.
She has received the Public Health Service Superior Service Award; Arthritis Foundation William R. Felts Award; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services PHS Staff Recognition Award; FDA Commissioner’s Special Citation; NIMH Director’s Merit Award; was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation and a committee of the Institute of Medicine; testified before Congress; was a World Health Organization Advisor and member of the National Library of Medicine’s Literature Selection Technical Review (Medline) Committee.
Dr. Sternberg lectures and chairs conferences nationally and inter nationally, including the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.), Nobel Forum (Karolinska Institute, Stockholm); is past-President of the International Society for Neuroimmunomodulation; co-directed the NLM Exhibition on “Emotions and Disease” (1996) and is featured in the NLM’s Exhibition on Women in Medicine (2004-05).
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
