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.

AJAHN AMARO is co-abbot of Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery in northern California. He received a B.Sc. with Honours from London University in psychology & physiology. In 1977 he took up residence in a forest meditation monastery in the lineage of Ven. Ajahn Chah in Northeast Thailand. He returned to England to join Ven. Ajahn Sumedho at a newly founded forest
monastery in Sussex. In 1983, he journeyed 830 miles on foot to a branch monastery in Northumberland. In 1985 he came to Amaravati Buddhist Centre and helped with teaching and administration for ten years, serving as vice-abbot for the last two years. He started coming to the USA in 1990, spending a few months each year teaching here. In 1996 Abhayagiri Monastery was opened.

The main focus of his life is practicing as a forest monk, and teaching and training others in that same tradition. Since 1988 he has taken part in numerous conferences and seminars, including two in Dharamsala and one in California with the Dalai Lama and a group of Western Buddhist teachers. In 1994 in London he was also involved in a seminar, “The Good Heart”, that the Dalai Lama led where he was giving commentaries on the Christian gospels. He has published four books: Tudong-the Long Road North, Silent Rain, The Pilgrim Kamanita (ed.) and Small Boat, Great Mountain-Theravadan Reflections on the Natural Great Perfection. Another book is forth coming (a companion to Small Boat) The Island-An Anthology of the Buddha’s Teachings on Nirvana.

Martha Farah, Ph.D., grew up in New York City and went to college at MIT, where she earned undergraduate degrees in Metallurgy and Philosophy in 1977. She studied Experimental Psychology at Harvard, earning a Ph.D. in 1983 and going on to postdoctoral studies in Neuropsychology at MIT and the Boston VA Hospital. She has taught at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pennsylvania, where she is now Walter H. Annenberg Professor in the Natural Sciences and Director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience.

Her work spans many topics within cognitive neuroscience, including visual perception, attention, mental imagery, semantic memory, reading, prefrontal function, and most recently, neuroethics. Her publications include: Visual Agnosia, (MIT Press, 1990; 2nd edition, 2004), The Cognitive Neuroscience of Vision (Blackwell, 2000), and the edited volume: Patient-based Approaches to Cognitive Neuroscience (MIT Press, 1999; 2nd edition 2006), and she is the Associate Editor for Neuroethics of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. She is a recipient of the American Psychological Association’s Early Career Contribution Award, the National Academy of Science’s Troland Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

English interpreter for the Dalai Lama