Nathan Fisher received his BA in Religious Studies (Honors) from Vanderbilt University in 2011. He then joined the Clinical and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at Brown University where he managed the “Varieties of Contemplative Experience” study from 2012-2015. He received the Francisco J. Varela Research Award in 2012 and began a PhD program in Religious Studies and Cognitive Science at the University of California-Santa Barbara in the fall of 2015. His current research investigates Jewish and comparative mystical traditions as well as how science and religion are coming together in the emerging field of Contemplative Science.
Jared Lindahl, PhD is Visiting Scholar at the Cogut Center for the Humanities and Director of Humanistic Research in the Clinical and Affective Neuroscience Lab at Brown University. He holds a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where his dissertation research adopted a bio-cultural methodology to investigate the significance of light-related experiences and discourses in Buddhist and Christian contemplative traditions. His ongoing scholarship examines the history of contemplative practices in a range of contexts—from classical Greece, India, and Tibet to Buddhist modernism and the mindfulness movement in the United States. Recently he has been working collaboratively with neuroscientists and clinical psychologists to investigate the theory and practice of meditation from both humanistic and scientific perspectives.
David E. Meyer is a faculty member of the Cognition and Perception Program in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. A mathematical psychologist and cognitive scientist, he received his PhD from Michigan and subsequently worked for almost a decade as a Member of Technical Staff in the Human Information Processing Research Department at the Bell Telephone Laboratories before returning to academe.
His teaching and research — sponsored by the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Mental Health, and Office of Naval Research — have dealt with fundamental aspects of human perception, attention, learning, memory, language, movement production, multitasking, executive mental control, human-computer interaction, personality and cognitive style, cognitive aging, cognitive neuroscience, mathematical models, and unified computational theories.
For his diverse scientific contributions, Professor Meyer has been elected as a Fellow in the Society of Experimental Psychologists, American Psychological Society, American Psychological Association, and American Association for The Advancement of Science. The American Psychological Association has honored him with its Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award.
Nicholas Van Dam holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology and has extensive training in Cognitive Neuroscience and Mindfulness/Meditation. He completed a B.S. in Neurobiology and Psychology at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, a 90 minute drive from his hometown of Brookfield, WI. Nicholas completed a M.A. and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at the University at Albany, SUNY and did a Pre-doctoral fellowship in Clinical Psychology at Yale University. He did several post-doctoral fellowships (at New York University School of Medicine; Nathan Kline Institute / Child Mind Institute; Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai) prior to joining the faculty in the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne.
Nicholas has interests in Anxiety, Depression, Decision-making, fMRI, Psychometrics, Mindfulness, and Assessment. Nicholas is a Mind & Life Fellow.
