Gabriela Torres Platas, holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from McGill University where she studied the implication of glial cells and their inflammatory contribution in depressed suicides. After her doctoral studies, she pursued clinical research training and Co-lead a laboratory at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal where she conducted several clinical trials to study the biological mechanisms of Mindfulness-based interventions when used as a treatment in psychiatric disorders. She is currently pursuing a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University in the Paller Lab in collaboration with the Emory-Tibet Science program, to study the neural correlates of sleep & dream yoga in Chicago and in different Monasteries in India.
Eli Susman is a Ph.D. student in Professor Allison Harvey’s Lab in the clinical science program at UC Berkeley. He graduated from Middlebury in 2018 with a BA in Psychology. Before starting at Berkeley Eli worked as a research coordinator at Harvard in Professor Kate McLaughlin’s Stress and Development Lab. Eli’s passion for clinical science developed over the course of more than a decade working with high-risk youth and young adults in community wilderness therapy in-patient and research settings. Under the mentorship of Professor Harvey Eli aims to develop more efficient accessible and deployable interventions by drawing from the wisdom and science of contemplative practice and the science of habit formation to foster compassion and freedom from human suffering. Eli is a Certified Yoga Teacher Laughter Yoga Leader and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. When not in the lab or clinic he enjoys meditation yoga skiing hiking trail running and contact improvisation.
Natalie Lecy, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of South Dakota and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Her research focuses on mindfulness-based interventions and increasing inclusivity in higher education for first-generation and marginalized students through trauma-informed and student-centered approaches. Natalie has over a decade of experience practicing in clinical and community settings. Through her career she has secured funding for innovative community interventions utilizing collective impact models to leverage local resources. Natalie operates a private practice utilizing mindfulness-based therapy while working primarily with LGBTQI+ populations. She enjoys enhancing her clinical practice through mindfulness-based research and vice versa.
Dr. Hofkens is an Assistant Research Professor at the Center for the Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning at the University of Virginia. In her research, Dr. Hofkens integrates her background in learning science, child development, and stress physiology to study how classroom experiences contribute to children’s academic achievement and psychological wellbeing from early childhood through adolescence. Dr. Hofkens is particularly interested in how contemplative perspectives on stress and engagement could transform teaching and learning in American public schools.
Joe is a clinical psychology PhD student in the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke University. He is mentored by Dr. Moria Smoski. He is interested in translational approaches to studying the effects of mindfulness-based interventions. His other interests include advanced statistical approaches to enhance the measurement of psychopathology and transdiagnostic processes, psychedelic science, and contemplative pedagogy.
Joe graduated from Brown University in 2018 with degrees in Psychology and Contemplative Studies. He is also an alumn of the Emory-Tibet Mind-Body Sciences Program.
Marisa is a PhD candidate in School Psychology at The Pennsylvania State University. There she is a graduate research fellow in The Lab for School-Based Prevention. Her research centers on how contemplative practices may inform pedagogy for socio-emotional development. Currently, Marisa’s work examines contemplative practices as scaffolding for identity development and meaning-making in emerging adolescence. Her research uses innovative technology, like wearables and digital apothecaries, to address issues of implementation and skill transfer. Marisa is a former post-secondary advisor at the secondary level, having served in the College Advising Corp. and former child mindfulness instructor in the elementary school setting.
Dr Kelly Birtwell (she/her) holds a PhD in Primary Care Research from the University of Manchester, UK. She is a chartered psychologist, a person-centred counsellor and a trained mindfulness teacher. For her PhD she developed a brief mindfulness-based intervention to improve wellbeing, using the person-based approach to intervention development. Kelly is interested in meditation safety and making mindfulness more accessible for underserved groups, particularly for people from areas of socioeconomic deprivation and for people who are neurodivergent. Kelly’s research interests have developed through her clinical experience of teaching mindfulness in a range of settings including the English National Health Service, workplace and community settings, and from speaking to autistic people about their experiences of mindfulness. Kelly is currently working on a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Manchester where she is using a ‘realist’ approach to explore how, why, and to what extent mindfulness ‘works’ (or not) for people from areas of socioeconomic deprivation.
Dr. Baker is a postdoctoral scholar in the Human Affect and Pain Neuroscience Laboratory at Duke University, where she is focused on using brain and spine fMRI to examine neurobiological mechanisms of chronic pain. As a doctoral student, she conducted biobehavioral research on mindfulness as a treatment for chronic pain. Now, she aims to combine her pre- and post-doctoral training to improve chronic pain management through enhanced mechanistic understanding and development of mechanistically driven, multimodal interventions. Dr. Baker is especially interested in using psychedelic-assisted and mindfulness-based therapies to modify central pain networks, and in linking treatment responses to neuroimaging findings.
James N. Kirby, Ph.D., is a Senior Lecturer, Clinical Psychologist, and the Co-Director of the Compassionate Mind Research Group at the University of Queensland. He has broad research interests in compassion, but specifically examines factors that facilitate and inhibit compassionate responding. He also examines the clinical effectiveness of compassion focused interventions, specifically in how they help with self-criticism and shame that underpin many depression and anxiety disorders. James also holds a Visiting Fellowship at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University. In 2022 he authored Choose Compassion, and in 2020 he co-edited Making an Impact on Mental Health. He serves as an Associate Editor for two international journals Mindfulness and Psychology & Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice.
As the fourth Dean of the historic Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel, the Reverend Dr. Bernard L. Richardson is the executive officer for religious affairs at Howard University. Dr. Richardson is perhaps most widely recognized by the University community and leaders across the nation for his prolific prayers and insightful spiritual guidance.
Dr. Richardson has set an example in affirming religious diversity and freedom both on campus and throughout the community. He has the distinction of being the first to officially establish a Muslim chaplaincy at a U.S. university. Dr. Richardson has built upon the Chapel’s social justice legacy by opening the Chapel to the interfaith leaders who birthed the Million Man March, welcoming anti-apartheid and religious leader Archbishop Desmund Tutu as a Chapel speaker, and hosting President William Clinton and the World AIDS Conference.
Under his leadership, Rankin Chapel is known as one of the most effective chapels in the nation. The Sunday service, a center of thought and leadership, reaches a worldwide broadcast audience of over one million. Generations of students cite the life-changing impact of Chapel initiatives instituted by Dr. Richardson including: Chapel Assistants, Alternative Spring Break (ASB), HU Day of Service, the Interfaith Advisory Board, Justice for Juveniles Prison Ministry and the University’s first Children’s Defense Fund Freedom School. After securing $2.5 million in funding from the Lilly Endowment establishing the Spiritual and Ethical Dimensions of Leadership initiative (SEDL), he launched a series of Learning Labs to produce spiritually sensitive leaders. He led the worship service for the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington honoring those who organized and marched. He twice hosted President Barak Obama’s White House Interfaith Community Service Campus Challenge with the first international delegations in 2015.
Dr. Richardson has advanced the connection between scholarship, spirituality and service. His impact was marked in 2015 by the White House with a place on the Higher Education Interfaith Community Service Honor Roll. This honor was largely due to the Alternative Spring Break program that Dr. Richardson developed in 1994. In 2006, he persuaded FEMA to grant permission for Howard students to serve following Hurricane Katrina, opening the door for other volunteers and leading to the recognition of the ASB students by ABC’s World News Tonight as their Persons of the Week. ASB has become Howard University’s flagship service-learning program that, through fundraising, is offered at no cost to students.
Certified as a Mindfulness Meditation Teacher and Koru Mindfulness Teacher, Dr. Richardson launched the Wellness Collective and the Howard University Mindfulness Training Initiative that are providing transformative support to the university community.
Dr. Richardson, a tenured Associate Professor at the Howard University School of Divinity, has made scholarly contributions in the areas of pastoral care and counseling. Among his distinguished lectures are the Parks/King Lecture at Yale University and the Indaba Revitalizing Social Work in South Africa. Dr. Richardson is an ordained minister in the A.M.E. Zion Church who has previously served as a pastor, counseling specialist, mental health therapist and faculty member at several institutions.
Dr. Richardson has earned a B.S., Sociology, Howard University; M. Div., Yale University Divinity School; M.A. and Ph.D., Michigan State University, and an honorary Doctor of Divinity, Carthage College.
His numerous honors include: Howard University 2018 Alumni Award for Distinguished Postgraduate Achievement in the field of Religion; Washington, DC Hall of Fame; MLK Jr. Board of Preachers of Morehouse College; DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities; Phi Delta Kappa Honor Society; National Institute of Mental Health Fellowship; Crystal Apple Outstanding Educator Award, Michigan State University; Special Citation of Achievement as orator for the 139th Opening Convocation of Howard University; Benjamin E. Mays Fellowship for Ministry; Perth Amboy High School Hall of Fame. He is a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.
