Meredith brings more than fifteen years of experience in integrative and complementary medicine research across foundations, universities, and research institutions. She currently serves as the Research and Program Director for the Subtle Energy Funders Collective and as the Fellowship Director for the Biofield Fellowship Research Program. She is pursuing her PhD at Leiden University in the PRSM Lab where she studies energy healing dyads and the psychological, interpersonal, and contextual factors that shape healing experiences.

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Her work centers on evaluating how complementary modalities can be incorporated into allopathic medicine for the treatment of chronic disease with the goal of strengthening resilience, supporting wellbeing, and fostering whole person healing. Trained in social psychological research methods along with research evaluation and assessment, she has held research roles with the Samueli Institute, the Samueli Foundation Integrative Health Programs, the Consciousness and Healing Initiative, the John W. Brick Mental Health Foundation, University of California San Diego, Georgetown University, and as a guest researcher with the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research. Meredith holds a BA in psychology and government from Georgetown University and an MS in Conflict Analysis and Resolution.

Richard Hammerschlag PhD, has been fortunate to have had several research careers, starting with 25 years in neurobiology research, mainly at the City of Hope National Medical Center, Duarte CA, where he served as Associate Chair, Division of Neurosciences. The next 10 years involved him in acupuncture and what was then called Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) research, based at the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine in Portland, OR, where he was Dean and founding Director of Research. During this latter decade, he played a supporting role in the societal shift in attitude toward, and usage of, CAM and integrative medicine, especially as a result of his leadership in creative research projects. These included a range of NIH-funded studies that involved conventional medicine/CAM collaborations, whole systems research and research education. During this period, he also served as co-president of the Society for Acupuncture Research and as an Executive Editor of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. At present, in his ‘retirement’, Richard is engaged in defining the emerging area of Biofield Physiology, as a Scholar with the NOVA Institute for Health, Baltimore, MD and as Senior Research Advisor for the Consciousness and Healing Initiative, La Jolla, CA.

Wayne Jonas, MD, is a widely published investigator, practicing family physician, and professor of medicine at Georgetown University and at Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences. He is also a retired lieutenant colonel in the Medical Corps of the United States Army. Dr. Jonas was the director of the Office of Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health from 1995 to 1999 and led the World Health Organization’s Collaborative Center for Traditional Medicine. Prior to that, he served as the director of medical research fellowship at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. He now advises national and international organizations on ways to implement evidence-based healing practices in their medical systems. He serves as the President of Healing Works Foundation.

Evan Lewis-Healey is a postdoctoral researcher within the Flourishing Intelligence Programme (FLIP) at the Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, University of Oxford. Currently, his work aims to understand the computational neural mechanisms underlying meditation practice, ultimately informing technological developments that can support human flourishing. Prior to this, Evan completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge, where he studied the cognitive neuroscience of psychedelics, breathwork, and meditation. Within his PhD, he ran the first study to simultaneously examine both the neural and experiential correlates of high-ventilation breathwork, a powerful non-pharmacological state similar to psychedelics. Prior to his PhD, Evan studied Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Amsterdam, and was a science writer. He is broadly interested in the neuroscience of altered states of consciousness, and how these insights may reduce suffering at scale. 

Dr. Natalie Dyer, PhD, is a Research Scientist with Connor Whole Health at University Hospitals, Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute at University of California Irvine, and President of the Center for Reiki Research. She obtained her Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Toronto, Doctorate in Neuroscience at Queen’s University, and postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard University Department of Psychology and Harvard Medical School.
Natalie has published many scientific papers and book chapters on postmaterialist science, psychedelics, and the therapeutic effects of integrative medicine practices, including Reiki, yoga, acupuncture, and mindfulness.

She obtained her Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Toronto, Doctorate in Neuroscience at Queen’s University, and postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard University Department of Psychology and Harvard Medical School.
Natalie has published many scientific papers and book chapters on postmaterialist science, psychedelics, and the therapeutic effects of integrative medicine practices, including Reiki, yoga, acupuncture, and mindfulness.

Jeffery A Dusek, PhD, is Professor in the Department of Medicine, University of California- Irvine (UCI) and Director of Research Outcomes, Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute (ssihi.uci), Dr. Dusek has 25+ years of experience leading innovative integrative health and medicine (IHH) research at research and healthcare institutions.

Over the past 10 years, Dusek has received NIH funding for four studies. Dusek was PI of NCCIH R01 to further explore the effectiveness (or outcomes) of integrative interventions (massage therapy, acupuncture) on repeated measures of self-reported pain for hospitalized patients. Dusek was also PI of a multi-site NCCIH R01 to study the effects of acupuncture on acute pain for individuals in three Emergency Departments affiliated with the BraveNet Practice Based Research Network (PBRN). More recently, Dusek serves PI of a multi-site NCCIH R01 to study the music therapy for pain in individuals with sickle cell disease. He is also PI of a NCCIH U24 network grant to assemble music therapists, neuroscience experts and clinical trialists to explore the biological basis of how music therapy impacts pain.
Dusek also serves as the co-leader of the BraveNet PBRN– which includes 32 well-known IHH groups across the US, as well as in Canada, Australia, Brazil and Korea.

Dusek has published over 120 scientific articles in peer reviewed medical literature and, according to Google Scholar, his research has been cited over 12,000 times. His research has been published in eminent journals such as the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Circulation, JAMA Network Open and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. His research has been featured in such venues as the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, USA Today and National Public Radio.

PhD, MPH, is Professor Emerita of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Arizona. Trained as a medical and biological anthropologist, she has been active in federally-funded research into complementary, alternative, and integrative medicine (CIM) for more than 20 years, and was among the first to define and then implement whole systems research in CIM. She has mentored researchers in the field, and continues her involvement through consultation in major research projects, now with a focus on qualitative analysis. Her early interests were in shamanism and in the energy medicine components of whole systems, and this led her to the Sufi spiritual path and training in spiritual healing. In retirement she continues her research consultation and mentoring at all levels. In addition, she now introduces new Sufi students to the experiences of biofield interactions and healing, both as a healer and as a teacher. She is on the Scientific Advisory Council of CHI (Consciousness and Healing Initiative, CHI.is), and is a community leader at Sufi Center Minnesota (suficentermn.org).

Adam Hanley is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Complementary Health Innovation Lab (CHIL) at Florida State University. The goal of his research program is to develop and refine both brief and intensive mindfulness-based interventions that can be embedded in medical settings to reduce pain and improve quality of life. He also has an interest in the therapeutic value of self-transcendent experiences arising during mindfulness training.

Michael Lifshitz is an Assistant Professor working in the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill and the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. He did his doctorate in neuroscience at McGill and then a postdoc in anthropology at Stanford, where he worked with Tanya Luhrmann to study how culture shapes spiritual experience. He now co-directs the Psychedelics and Contemplation Lab, an interdisciplinary research space that combines phenomenology, neuroscience and ethnography to shed light on the plasticity of consciousness. His research focuses on practices that aim to transform subjective experience—from meditation and hypnosis to placebos, prayer, and psychedelics. He is particularly interested in how these practices can modulate feelings of agency, so that thoughts, actions and sensations can come to feel as if they are emerging from a source beyond the self.