Kibby McMahon is currently in her fourth year in the clinical psychology doctoral program at Duke University, supervised by Dr. Zachary Rosenthal. Her primary interests are developing and testing mindfulness based interventions for emotion dysregulation. She is also interested in studying the relationship among mindfulness, emotion dysregulation, and social cognitive processes such as the ability to perceive and understand other people’s emotions (empathy). Prior to graduate school, she was trained as a Vinyasa yoga instructor and has worked in social psychology research at Columbia University and Max Planck Institute of Human Development. 

Tarah Raldiris earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College at Florida Atlantic University in 2011. In 2014, she completed her master’s degree in applied psychological research from Penn State-Harrisburg. She entered Virginia Commonwealth University’s social psychology doctoral program in Fall 2015 and defended her PhD in November 2020. Broadly, her research interests are focused on understanding how to promote positive psychological and physical aging processes. She is particularly interested in the effect of mindfulness-based interventions on cognition, health, and well-being in older adults.

Catherine is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado. She received her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Texas at Arlington. As a graduate student, Catherine investigated the effects of brief mindfulness training on executive functioning skills among children as well as learning outcomes among university students. Now working in the Emotive Computing Laboratory under the guidance of Dr. Sidney D’Mello, Catherine explores what people think and how they feel when they exert self-regulation. Using mixed methodologies (e.g., physiological modeling, self-report), she works to advance understanding of how mental and emotional states arise and influence outcomes across a range of contexts (e.g., educational game play, reading, interpersonal interactions) from data collected in the lab, online, and in the field. Catherine also investigates interventions for strengthening self-regulation, such as how mind-body practices like deep breathing impact self-regulation and concomitant mental and emotional states.

I am a doctoral student in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, specializing in Vajrayana Buddhist practice and contemplative studies. As a Licensed Mental Health Counselor integrating clinical psychology and Buddhist and Yogic approaches, I aim to identify and share the benefits and applicability of contemplative practices. After developing a mindfulness and yoga-based wellness curriculum, I trained Department of Public Health, Juvenile Justice, and Department of Social Services treatment providers on implementation. While working in South Asian Buddhist communities for two years developing programs to address substance use and mental health issues, I decided to return to graduate school to deepen my understanding of traditional Buddhist practices and their integration with the developing field of Contemplative Studies. My fieldwork will focus on contemporary Buddhist practices as they are practiced in South Asian Buddhist communities, and their relationship to cultural context and psychological wellbeing.

Dr. Zabelina is a an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Arkansas. She received her Ph.D. at Northwestern University, and completed her postdoctoral training at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her work focuses on understanding creative cognition, imagination, and other related processes, and how these processes are linked with more traditional subfields of cognitive psychology, such as attention and executive functions. In her work, she uses a variety of approaches, including behavioral, genetic, electrophysiological (EEG and ERP), and functional MRI (fMRI) techniques. She also does work on mind-wandering, mindfulness, problem solving, the influence of technology on creativity and imagination, and what happens to creativity as we age. Dr. Zabelina is the director of the Mechanisms of Attention and Cognition (MoCA) laboratory, where the long-term objective is to create a theoretical foundation upon which to develop methods to enhance creative thinking, imagination, and problem-solving abilities.

Jacqueline Lutz, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center for Mindfulness and Compassion (CMC), Cambridge Health Alliance in Cambridge, MA. She received her PhD in psychology from the University of Zurich, working in the emotion regulation research group at the Psychiatric University clinic and under the supervision of Prof. Lutz Jäncke. 

Jacqueline’s research interests are in the fields of affective neuroscience, emotion regulation, mindfulness, self-referential processes, and their implication for clinical psychology. At CMC, and in collaboration with the MGH Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, she conducts an fMRI pilot study to investigate the potential of mindfulness training in a primary care setting, particularly related to self-regulation. Further, she is developing new translational research to gain a more precise understanding of psychological and physiologic processes related to self-compassion. In the future, she wishes to further investigate who profits from which contemplative and mind-body intervention.

Lauren Ministero received a BA with high honors in psychology as well as journalism and new media from The University at Buffalo. She is currently a 5^th year PhD student studying social psychology at The University at Buffalo. Her research interests include compassion, mindfulness, goal pursuit, and the self. A central question that guides Lauren’s work is: What personal and situational factors facilitate responding to victims of suffering, and how do these factors simultaneously impact the self? Previous research demonstrates that compassion predicts helping behavior as well as distress and avoidance. In her research, Lauren examines which components of compassion are truly predictive of helping, and how mindset can affect goal pursuit processes, tipping the scales in favor of pursuing prosocial goals. Additionally, she investigates how factors such as empathy and mindfulness influence how the self is expressed. In her spare time, Lauren enjoys yoga, exercise, and plant-based cooking.