Shin-Young Kim is a 2nd year clinical psychology Ph.D. student at the University of Rochester under the mentorship of Dr. Ron Rogge. She is interested in the mechanisms underlying mind-body interactions, particularly regarding contemplative meditations and interoceptive disturbances in emotional disorders. After receiving her master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from Sogang University, she received a Fulbright to continue her studies in the United States. Based on her past experience working as a researcher in the psychiatric departments of Korean hospitals, she plans to explore the role of cultural factors to address mental health disparities in Asian countries.
I am a Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University where I direct the Affective & Clinical Neuroscience Laboratory. My research program uses the tools of human neuroscience to study how the brain creates emotion and how these brain systems are implicated in health and well-being. I also study how stress affects the emotional brain, and bidirectional signaling between the brain and the immune system in generating risk and resilience for mental and physical health problems. More recently, I have begun examining the effect of intervention programs – including meditation – on neuroimmune signaling, and the potential of these programs to protect the developing brain from stress and adversity. I am very interested in the confluence between science and Buddhism, and am currently serving as Co-Director of Research Training for the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative (ETSI). This initiative aims to foster collaborations between academic scientists and Tibetan Buddhist monastics and to train monastic scientists in methods for studying the human brain, including EEG and both functional and structural brain imaging.
Dr. Sara Konrath directs the Interdisciplinary Program for Empathy and Altruism Research (iPEAR). Her research tracks changes over time in empathy and related traits in American young adults, and examines potential implications of digital technology for empathy. She has developed digital empathy-building tools for youth (Text to Connect; Random App of Kindness), and has created other empathy-training programs for other groups (e.g., teachers, physicians, museums, nonprofits). Konrath has published dozens of papers in top scientific journals, writes a popular Psychology Today blog, and her research has been featured in national and international media. She is an Associate Professor at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
Dr. Emily Weinstein is a longtime senior researcher (and soon-to-be Project Director) at Project Zero and a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. At Project Zero, she leads a suite of projects keyed to studying young people’s digital lives and re-imagining digital well-being. Dr. Weinstein has spent over a decade chasing answers to questions about what it’s like to grow up with smartphones and social media. She also has a longtime commitment to directly supporting schools and families, including through her work with Common Sense on digital citizenship.
Polina is a PhD Candidate in Social Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University, working with Dr. Kirk Warren Brown at the Wellbeing Lab. Originally from Russia, she served as Research Assistant at the Positive Psychology of Personality and Motivation Lab (Moscow, Russia), VIA institute on Character (Cincinnati, Ohio), and Decision Neuroscience Lab (Richmond, Virginia). Polina’s research interests lie in the intersection of contemplative science and positive psychology, with a special focus on how mindfulness practice affects our social and emotional well-being. In her free time, Polina enjoys reading and taking walks around Richmond.
Erika Díaz-Almeyda, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies at New College of Florida. She holds a Ph.D. in Biology at The Pennsylvania State University focusing on understanding the thermal acclimation of microbial symbionts of corals. She did a postdoctoral fellowship focusing on host microbe interactions in agricultural settings at Emory University. As a microbial ecologist her research interests are at the nexus of symbiosis, climate change, and Indigenous and sustainable practices. She studies how host-associated microbiota are affected by climate change, and the relationships between microbial diversity and land/water management.
Dr. Jyoti Mishra is a cognitive and computational neuroscientist, with expertise in studies of attention, learning and brain plasticity, as well as digital health therapeutics. She is the founder and director of the Neural Engineering and Translational Labs (NEATLabs) and is an Associate Professor in the department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego. NEATLabs innovates scalable human-centered mental health technologies and applies these in diverse local and global communities to help address important societal challenges – these include impacts of climate change on mental health and innovating social resiliency solutions in this context. In related teaching and service, Dr. Mishra co-directs the UC system-wide Climate Change and Mental Health Initiative.
Dennis Muñoz Vergara, DVM, MS, MPH is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and a mind-body movement therapies (MBMT) researcher. He is also a yoga instructor, a practice he has cultivated since he was pursuing a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree specializing in Animal Pathology in southern Chile. In 2016, he pursued a postdoctoral opportunity at Harvard Medical School (HMS), within the Osher Center’s Connective Tissue Laboratory. His research focuses on the effect of body stretching in acute and chronic myofascial inflammation. In 2017, he successfully applied to the NCCIH-funded T32 program (HMS Research Fellowship in Integrative Medicine). During this fellowship, he completed a program in Clinical Effectiveness and obtained an MPH degree from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His current research involves a translational pilot RCT examining the systemic inflammatory impact of a single bout of yogic exercise among yoga-naïve and sedentary adults. His long-term goal is to develop a clinical model for studying the intersection between the immune and myofascial systems and the benefits of yoga for health and disease. He loves to cook and dance with his husband, family, and friends. He also cultivates his writings of poetry and short stories with a group of Chilean writers and associates.
Lindsay Romano (she/her) is a third year PhD student at New York University. She studies how mindfulness- and compassion-based practices can be used as tools for social justice in education. Her work explores how the cultivation of cognitive and emotional capacities in educators (e.g., attention regulation, mindfulness, compassion) can influence positive social change in the classroom by addressing issues such as bias and dis/ability and racial injustices. Lindsay is a former high school Special Education teacher and plans to conduct her research in service of identifying practical and applicable mindfulness-based instructional strategies to share with school communities.
