Rachel Jacobs is currently a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and is interesting in using fMRI to study how interventions for adolescent depression work. She is currently examining whether using the skill of mindfulness can help interrupt ruminative tendencies among adolescents with a history of depression and whether this can help prevent depressive relapse. She is also learning about the intrinsic networks of the brain and how to measure these networks using resting state fMRI so that she can test what network patterns are associated with rumination and depression.
Jacobs received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Northwestern University in 2009 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Translational Child Psychiatry at Columbia University. Her doctoral work focused on cognitive mediators of treatment outcome among adolescents with depression.
Yoga and meditation have been part of her personal, but not work, life until recently. She is thrilled to be able to study how to use mindfulness to help youth and how mindfulness might change the brain.
Emily Lindsay is a research professor in psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. Her theory-driven work shows that mindfulness interventions improve health outcomes via stress buffering pathways and that acceptance training is a key component of mindfulness interventions that drives these effects. Her current work examines whether mindfulness interventions impact stress responding in ways that offset health risk among people exposed to early life adversity. Long-term, she hopes to contribute to the goal of addressing inequities in public health. Emily completed her PhD in social/health psychology at Carnegie Mellon University and postdoctoral training in psychoneuroimmunology at Pitt.
Lisa May is a doctoral candidate in the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Oregon. Her research focuses on understanding the neural mechanisms by which cognitive and affective processes affect pain perception, using pharmaceutical methods and functional MRI. Her ultimate goal is to improve chronic pain treatment, so she am particularly interested in psychological pain relief that can be engaged in intentionally through the cultivation of practices and habits. Her dissertation research is investigating the neural mechanisms by which gratitude and mindfulness affect the way pain is perceived and how these relate to negative beliefs and attitudes about pain.
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.
