Scientific Research

• First woman to act as Director of the prestigious Royal Institution of Great Britain (Est. 1799)
• Professor, Department of Pharmacology at Oxford University, and Senior Research Fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford, where she leads a team researching the novel neuronal mechanisms common to both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
• Listed as one of the "50 most powerful women in Britain" (The Guardian), and as one of the "50 Most Inspirational Women in the World" (Harpers and Queen).
• Holds 18 honorary degrees, and in 1998 was awarded the Michael Faraday medal by the Royal Society.
• A prolific writer and commentator, she presented a 6-part BBC series on the brain and mind in 2001.
• Books: Journey to the Centres of the Mind: Toward a Science of Consciousness, The Private Life of the Brain, and The Human Brain: A Guided Tour
• http://www.sirc.org/about/susan_greenfield.html

J. Allan Hobson, MD

• Received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School, where he is currently Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Laboratory of Neurophysiology
• Noted sleep and dream researcher whose books have been consistent best sellers
• Invited Lecturer at the Dipartimento di Psicologia, Universita di Bologna 's 900^th Anniversary Celebration, 1988
• Special Fellow of the National Institute of Mental Health, Department of Physiology at the University of Lyon, France (1963-1964)
• Books: The Chemistry of Conscious States, The Dreaming Brain, Consciousness and Sleep
• 13 Dreams Freud Never Had
• Dreaming: An Introduction to the Science of Sleep, Oxford University Press
• Dissecting a Dream: studies may shed light on mental illness

Christof Koch, PhD

• Received his PhD in West Germany at the Max-Planck-Institut for Biological Cybernetics
• Post-doctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Artificial Intelligence Lab
• Currently, the Troendle Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Biology at the California Institute of Technology
• Has worked with Nobel Laureate Dr. Francis Crick on long-term research efforts to discover and characterize the neuronal correlates of consciousness For a recent summary of their ideas, see the article "Consciousness and Neuroscience" that appeared in the journal Cerebral Cortex. Drs. Koch and Crick have also written a brief essay for an encyclopedia on their general approach to consciousness.
• Currently working on a 13-minute long animated movie traveling through the visual system, from the retina to deep into the cortex
• Books: Published in January 2004 -- The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach
• Homepage: http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~koch/

Fred H. Gage, PhD

• Currently, professor and researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, LaJolla, California
• PhD in Neuroscience, John Hopkins University, 1976
• Awards include the Christopher Reeves Medal, a MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health, a Decade of the Brain Medal, and a National Academy of Science Award in 2003
• When nominated by Time Magazine as a TIME 100: The Next Wave Innovator, the magazine wrote:  "By showing that adult brains can grow new nerve cells he stood neurobiological dogma on its head. Now Fred Gage is trying to determine whether behavior can rewire brains." http://www.time.com/time/innovators/science/profile_gage.html
• His Davos Profile is at: http://hdlighthouse.org/see/research/gage.htm

Abraham Verghese, MD, MFA., DSc (Hon.)

• Director, Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics, University of Texas Health Science Center
• Books: My Own Country: A Doctor's Story (finalist in the National Book Critics Circle Awards, 1994; later made into a movie), The Tennis Partner: A Story of Friendship and Loss  (national best seller)
• Graduated from Madras Medical College in India, trained at East Tennessee State, Fellow at Boston University
• In 1990-91, received his MFA from the University of Iowa, where he attended the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Murray Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Texas Tech in El Paso
• Board-certified in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary Diseases and Infectious Diseases
• http://www.texashumanities.org/Verghese.html
• Biographical article and video

Elizabeth "Lisby" Lloyd Mayer, PhD

• PhD from Stanford University, 1974
• Was an Associate Clinical Professor, Psychology Department, University of California-Berkeley
• With Brenda Dunne and Dr. Robert Jahn (PEAR/ICRL), worked on aspects
  of Coincidence Theory, among the "67 most exciting new ideas for 2003"
  (New York Times Magazine 12-14-03)
• Internationally renowned as a researcher, clinician, and author of papers on female development, clinical technique, the nature of science, and intuition.
• An accomplished contralto who received her musical education at the Mannes College of Music and at Harvard University;  Founder and Artistic Director, Bay Area's Christmas Revels
• Books: Extraordinary Knowing: Making Sense of the Inexplicable in Everyday Life.
• Dr. Mayer passed away on January 1, 2005

Steven Laureys, MD, PhD

• Received his PhD in Medical Science from the University of Liège
• Neurologist at the Cyclotron Research Center, University of Liège, Belgium
• Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique post-doctoral researcher
• Main area of research is the brain imaging of cognitive processes that have an impairment in consciousness—such as patients in a coma, in a vegetative state, in a minimally conscious state or with a 'locked-in' syndrome.
• Prolific writer, with scholarly contributions in more than 70 journals within the last 7 years. Chapter in book: Sleep and Brain Plasticity
• http://www.ulg.ac.be/crc/en/slaureys.html