Polina has been supporting the President of Mind & Life, Susan Bauer-Wu, as Executive Assistant since January 2023. As a previous recipient of the Mind & Life 1440 Grant for her dissertation research, participant of the Summer Research Institute, and presenter at the ISCS, she is grateful to assist Mind & Life at this time. Before coming here, Polina researched, developed, and facilitated mindfulness and movement programs for educators and children through the University of Virginia. She was blessed with the opportunity to mentor with Dr. Tish Jennings and direct the expansion of the Compassionate Schools Project to Charlottesville city schools. Beyond her role at Mind & Life, Polina is on a journey to create a magical and inspiring space at her home in Charlottesville that enables diverse community connections, meaning-making, and the cultivation of peace and loving-kindness through contemplative wisdom and the arts. The project is called Castle Hill Collective. Polina is also a certified Iyengar Yoga teacher who instructs private classes, group classes, and mindful movement workshops.

Nicholas Chadi completed his medical school and pediatric residency in Montreal and is currently an Adolescent Medicine Fellow at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada. His main research interests include substance abuse, international health, medical education, mental health and mindfulness-based interventions. Nicholas has been practicing meditation, yoga and mindfulness for many years and has recently completed an MBCT teacher training certification in California. He is currently leading a randomized study looking at the effectiveness of an 8-week mindfulness program for adolescents with a chronic illness. His multidisciplinary team is seeking to compare the effectiveness of an in-person vs eHealth mode of delivery to promote better access to mindfulness programs. Dr. Chadi is also a board member for the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine and a co-author of two recent Canadian practice guidelines addressing adolescent smoking prevention and cessation.

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.