John Plass is a graduate student working in the Visual Perception, Cognition, and Neuroscience and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratories in the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University. Broadly speaking, he is interested in perceptual inference, attention, and awareness. His recent work has focused on processes underlying audiovisual integration and multisensory body perception. His interest in meditation comes from an interest in the epistemic and therapeutic implications of the effects of meditation on perception. Previously, he earned his master’s degree in Buddhist Studies from Fo Guang University in Taiwan, where he focused on Buddhist meditation traditions in the context of epistemology and philosophy of mind.

Chivon Powers is a postdoctoral scholar working on the Shamatha Project with Dr. Clifford Saron at UC-Davis. She specializes in analysis of task-related electroencephalogram (EEG) oscillatory patterns as indicators of change in attention and other aspects of cognition. She is currently analyzing data from experienced meditators before, during, and after an intensive 3-month Shamatha meditation retreat to assess how these potential cognitive changes develop with intense, long-term meditative practice. Ultimately, she intends to apply her experience and knowledge of cognitive neuroscience to conduct rigorous scientific investigations of change in attention and cognitive processing that develops with long-term Ashtanga Yoga practice.

He is a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at Fielding Graduate University out of Santa Barbara, CA, previously ordained as Buddhist monk in the Burmese Theravadan tradition. He has taught Vipassana (mindfulness) and Metta (loving-kindness) meditation worldwide. A research project, under Dr. Kalina Christoff at the University of British Columbia, involved the investigation of thought patterns of advanced Vipassana meditative practitioners utilizing fMRI technology. His thesis research, now gratefully funded by the Varela Grant, involves a qualitative study of the experience of advanced meditators in the Mahasi vipassana tradition.  Clinically, he is interested in applying Buddhist and Western mindfulness techniques to the therapeutic experience. His clinical work has allowed hands on experience in the application of mindfulness to populations with chronic pain management, vocational challenges, and acquired brain injury. His aspiration is to strengthen the nexus between the Eastern and Western models of mental health using his monastic understanding and training as a psychologist.  

Kathrine is currently in her third year of graduate training in clinical psychology at Kent State University. Her primary research interests lie in understanding the factors that predict adaptive responding to emotional challenges. In particular, she is interested in the construct of “decentering,” which describes the mental process of viewing and relating to emotional experience from a wider, more objective perspective, rather than identifying with them personally. Her research aims to elucidate the therapeutic effects and mechanisms of decentering, and the relationship of decentering capacity to individual differences in mindfulness, emotion regulation, and mental health. She is also broadly interested in the neural mechanisms of automatic, or “incidental,” emotion regulation, and is currently working on a study examining the relationship of individual differences in emotional functioning and the spontaneous recruitment of emotion regulatory brain regions during negative emotional provocation.

Inspired by a longstanding interest in neurodevelopmental disorders and psychiatric illness, Dr. Sarah Short’s research has consistently focused on identifying early determinants of neurodevelopmental risk. As an Assistant Professor in the Psychiatry Department at UNC, Dr. Short’s current research projects are designed to: 1) identify white matter connections in the brain that support the emergence of working memory from infancy to 6-years of age, 2) to examine the magnitude and location of experience-dependent structural plasticity in white matter tracts following a standardized working memory training program and, 3) to determine whether a parent-child mindfulness training program will improve working memory and result in measurable brain changes. Her long-term goal is to use this knowledge to design preventive intervention strategies that take advantage of optimal developmental periods of neural plasticity to strengthen neural circuits specific to formative cognitive processes.

Dev Ashish is a doctoral student in clinical psychology working in the Neuropsychology, Emotion and Meditation lab at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. He is currently working on reviewing research on loving-kindness meditation and proposing future directions for the research. His research projects involve understanding the neural, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral effects of loving-kindness meditation and particularly self-compassion. His clinical interests relate to using meditation techniques to help not only in coping with psychological trauma, but also the development of resilience, using mindfulness and Loving-kindness practices in therapy with inmates with PTSD, severe mental illness, substance abuse and other complaints. He is also interested in the contemplative dimension of teaching and learning and he has designed courses in which he has added contemplative practices as a part of the curriculum and received highly positive reviews from his students.