Le-Anh Dinh-Williams did her B.Sc. (Honours) in Psychology at McGill University, followed by an M.Sc. in Psychiatry at the University of Montreal. She is currently in her 4th year of study in a MA/PhD Clinical Psychology program at the University of Toronto (at Scarborough) under the mentorship of Dr. Zindel Segal and Dr. Norman Farb. She is interested in examining reward processing in Mood Disorders, including hedonic and eudaimonic forms of reward, and the effects of novel therapeutic interventions in the treatment of these disorders.

Jose Herrero trained in electrophysiology in the UK, under the umbrella of Dr. Alex Thiele, studying the neural and cellular substrates underlying the focus of attention to external objects. Later, he became more interested in the neuronal oscillations underlying attention to inner sensations (e.g., breathing) and meditative processes. Thus, he moved to NYC to work with intracranial human patients at the Department of Neurosurgery at Northwell with a neurosurgeon, Dr. Ashesh Mehta. He is currently studying a new line of mind-body research to explore respiration-coupled oscillations in the cortex and limbic system as they relate to deep, slow breathing and meditation. Jose is also looking into how breathing exercises can change neuronal oscillations and brain connectivity in epilepsy. He also uses electrical neurostimulation techniques to better understand interoceptive attention to breathing. 

Kibby McMahon is currently in her fourth year in the clinical psychology doctoral program at Duke University, supervised by Dr. Zachary Rosenthal. Her primary interests are developing and testing mindfulness based interventions for emotion dysregulation. She is also interested in studying the relationship among mindfulness, emotion dysregulation, and social cognitive processes such as the ability to perceive and understand other people’s emotions (empathy). Prior to graduate school, she was trained as a Vinyasa yoga instructor and has worked in social psychology research at Columbia University and Max Planck Institute of Human Development. 

Tarah Raldiris earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College at Florida Atlantic University in 2011. In 2014, she completed her master’s degree in applied psychological research from Penn State-Harrisburg. She entered Virginia Commonwealth University’s social psychology doctoral program in Fall 2015 and defended her PhD in November 2020. Broadly, her research interests are focused on understanding how to promote positive psychological and physical aging processes. She is particularly interested in the effect of mindfulness-based interventions on cognition, health, and well-being in older adults.

Catherine is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado. She received her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Texas at Arlington. As a graduate student, Catherine investigated the effects of brief mindfulness training on executive functioning skills among children as well as learning outcomes among university students. Now working in the Emotive Computing Laboratory under the guidance of Dr. Sidney D’Mello, Catherine explores what people think and how they feel when they exert self-regulation. Using mixed methodologies (e.g., physiological modeling, self-report), she works to advance understanding of how mental and emotional states arise and influence outcomes across a range of contexts (e.g., educational game play, reading, interpersonal interactions) from data collected in the lab, online, and in the field. Catherine also investigates interventions for strengthening self-regulation, such as how mind-body practices like deep breathing impact self-regulation and concomitant mental and emotional states.

I am a doctoral student in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, specializing in Vajrayana Buddhist practice and contemplative studies. As a Licensed Mental Health Counselor integrating clinical psychology and Buddhist and Yogic approaches, I aim to identify and share the benefits and applicability of contemplative practices. After developing a mindfulness and yoga-based wellness curriculum, I trained Department of Public Health, Juvenile Justice, and Department of Social Services treatment providers on implementation. While working in South Asian Buddhist communities for two years developing programs to address substance use and mental health issues, I decided to return to graduate school to deepen my understanding of traditional Buddhist practices and their integration with the developing field of Contemplative Studies. My fieldwork will focus on contemporary Buddhist practices as they are practiced in South Asian Buddhist communities, and their relationship to cultural context and psychological wellbeing.

Dr. Zabelina is a an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Arkansas. She received her Ph.D. at Northwestern University, and completed her postdoctoral training at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her work focuses on understanding creative cognition, imagination, and other related processes, and how these processes are linked with more traditional subfields of cognitive psychology, such as attention and executive functions. In her work, she uses a variety of approaches, including behavioral, genetic, electrophysiological (EEG and ERP), and functional MRI (fMRI) techniques. She also does work on mind-wandering, mindfulness, problem solving, the influence of technology on creativity and imagination, and what happens to creativity as we age. Dr. Zabelina is the director of the Mechanisms of Attention and Cognition (MoCA) laboratory, where the long-term objective is to create a theoretical foundation upon which to develop methods to enhance creative thinking, imagination, and problem-solving abilities.