Michael J. Crowley, Ph.D. is an assistant professor at the Yale Child Study Center, is a child psychologist whose work focuses on key questions in social and affective neuroscience. Dr. Crowley earned his doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2004. He completed a child-focused clinical internship through the Brown University Clinical Psychology Training Consortium. Dr. Dr. Crowley’s work in child anxiety focuses on the neural substrates of avoidance, threat detection, worry and addiction risk. Dr. Crowley also studies mindfulness as an intervention for child anxiety and to improve child self-compassion. He uses dense array electroencephalography, peripheral physiology and functional imaging in his work with children and adolescents.
Kami is a Doctoral Candidate and Bennett Pierce Graduate Fellow in Compassion and Caring in the Human Development and Family Studies Department at Penn State University, mentored by her advisor Dr. Mark Greenberg. Her research focuses on evidence-based prevention strategies in educational settings, in particular the promotion of genuine personal and social awareness as a way to support positive and healthy youth development. Kami is interested in examining how to cultivate and expand the basic human capacities of mindfulness and compassion, and enhance youth and teachers’ personal and social wellbeing, ethical behavior, and educational success. For her dissertation at Penn State University, Kami assumed the lead role in a randomized control trial project, evaluating the impact of college-adapted mindfulness training on 1st year students’ health and wellbeing.
Dr. Felver is an assistant professor of psychology at Syracuse University and director of the Mind Body Laboratory. His research focuses on contemplative interventions to promote self-regulation, with special focus on mindfulness-based interventions. He is particularly interested in how contemplative interventions can be implemented in public school settings with students and teachers to support academic functioning and classroom behavior, and in families to improve parent-child communication and parent emotional regulation. His current research projects include: pilot trials of school-based contemplative curricula (i.e., Learning to BREATHE, Kripalu Yoga in the Schools, Soles of the Feet for Students), mindfulness-based interventions for young adults in college settings (i.e., Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction), and laboratory-based research exploring the psychophysiological effects of mindfulness-interventions on self-regulatory processes and stress.
Currently a Ph.D. Student in Education at UC Davis, I am interested in cognition, the body, and embodied contemplative practices. I am investigating the effects that a school-based yoga intervention has on children’s self-regulation from an embodied cognitive scientific perspective. I am interested in qualitatively exploring the effects these programs have on teachers’ perceptions of teaching quality. I am a Graduate Research Assistant on a project examining the impact yoga may have on preschoolers who show signs of impulsivity and hyperactivity at the MIND Institute. I also work as a Graduate Student Research in lab that examines the ways wearable technologies and video games increase adolescents’ awareness around health. I am the Principal Investigator of “Stories From the Mat,” a study examining literacy practices of yoga instructors and the ways in which instructors’ stories showcases their lived experiences and the connections they experience between their practice and writing.
I completed my PhD in developmental psychology from the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development, with a minor in human genetics. Currently I am a post-doctoral fellow at the Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics in the Department of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia. My adviser is Michael Kobor, PhD. Broadly, I am interested in the biological embedding of early life trauma and the manner by which children show resilience despite experiencing adversity. More specifically I am interested in how trauma may alter the activity of children’s genes, through epigenetic processes, to undermine psychological and physical health. Equally, I am fascinated with how positive life experiences, such as mindfulness exercises, constructive parenting, and compassionate friendship can counteract the impacts of trauma. Understanding the epigenetics of both trauma and positive environments may aid in more productive efforts to improve children’s lives.
