2025 Plenary Speakers
Lisa Feldman Barrett, Ph.D.
Lisa Feldman Barrett, Ph.D., is among the top 0.1% most cited scientists in the world for her revolutionary research in psychology and neuroscience. She is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University. She also holds appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, where she is Chief Science Officer for the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior. Dr. Barrett has published over 275 peer-reviewed, scientific papers appearing in Science, Nature Neuroscience, and other top journals in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, as well as six academic volumes published by Guilford Press. She writes regularly about science in the popular press, including The New York Times, The Guardian, Scientific American, BBC Science Focus, Popular Science, Nautilus, BigThink, Cosmopolitan, Time magazine, MIT Technology Review, and more (see full list). Her popular TED talk has been viewed over 7 million times.
Dr. Barrett received a National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award for her revolutionary research on emotion in the brain. These highly competitive, multimillion dollar awards are given to scientists of exceptional creativity who are expected to transform biomedical and behavioral research. She also received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019, the APS Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2018, and the APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in Psychology in 2021.
Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a psychologist, Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, and New York Times best-selling author. His seven books have been published in 33 languages and include Making Great Relationships, Neurodharma, Resilient, Hardwiring Happiness, Just One Thing, Buddha’s Brain, and Mother Nurture – with over a million copies in English alone. He's the founder of the Global Compassion Coalition and the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, as well as the co-host of the Being Well podcast – which has been downloaded over 16 million times. His free newsletters have 260,000 subscribers, and his online programs have scholarships available for those with financial needs. He’s lectured at NASA, Google, Oxford, and Harvard. An expert on positive neuroplasticity, his work has been featured on CBS, NPR, the BBC, and other major media. He began meditating in 1974 and has taught in meditation centers worldwide. He and his wife live in northern California and have two adult children. He loves the wilderness and taking a break from emails.
Rhonda M. Merwin, Ph.D.
Rhonda M. Merwin, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor for the Duke University School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Merwin completed her doctorate at the University of Mississippi and an NIH-sponsored postdoctoral fellowship in Behavioral Medicine at Duke University Medical Center before joining the Duke faculty in 2008. Dr. Merwin has expertise in eating disorders, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and psychological concerns in the management of Type 1 diabetes. She is 1 of 111 peer-reviewed ACT trainers worldwide, a Fellow, and current President of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science.
Baljinder Kaur Sahdra, Ph.D.
Associate Professor Baljinder Kaur Sahdra is a researcher at the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education at the Australian Catholic University, North Sydney, Australia. She also serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science. She has made substantial scientific contributions in the areas of well-being, mindfulness, compassion, nonattachment, intensive meditation, discrimination and social identity, compulsive internet use, educational psychology, and personalizing psychology (see more here: https://bit.ly/BaljinderSahdraPhD). Her research articles are highly cited (7,000+ Google Scholar citations; 950+ media mentions). She has been awarded with several prestigious awards and competitive research grants ($7+ million). She is passionate about the role of idionomic methods, which integrate individual-level and group-level insights to advance data-driven personalized psychological care. Most relevant for this plenary talk, her recent research focuses on idionomic analyses of psychological processes of change, such as, compassion, valued-action, mindfulness, and psychological flexibility.
Michael Tomasello, Ph.D.
Michael Tomasello, Ph.D. is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, has applied a comparative and developmental approach toward seeking answers. His studies on the psychological processes of social cognition, social learning, cooperation, and communication shed light on human uniqueness as well as on the cognitive abilities of our closest ape relatives. Tomasello, who is emeritus director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2017.