Speakers

Prof. Bonanno is an internationally renowned expert on trauma and resilience. He is a Professor of Clinical Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University, and has conducted ground-breaking research on trauma, loss and other kinds of adversity for over three decades. He has been listed among the top one percent most cited scientists in the world and has been honored by the Association for Psychological Science “for a lifetime of intellectual achievements in applied psychological research and their impact on a critical problem in society at large” and by the International Positive Psychology Association for “distinguished lifetime contributions to positive psychology.” His books include the Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells us About Life After Loss and, most recently, The End of Trauma: How the New Science of Resilience is Changing How We Think About PTSD.”

Dr. Malvika Godara is a postdoctoral researcher at the Social Neuroscience Lab, Max Planck Society. She obtained her PhD in Clinical Psychology at Ghent University, and has previously conducted research at Complutense University of Madrid and Yale University. Her research interests broadly center on understanding biopsychosocial risk and resilience mechanisms for psychological health and general well-being, with specific interest in behavioral and cognitive flexibility. She is also passionate about researching and developing evidence-based digital therapeutics for mental well-being.
 

Marian González-García, PhD, is a psychologist specialized in mindfulness, emotion regulation and mental health. She combines her work as researcher and university professor with mindfulness teaching and a private practice in psychology. Marian holds a PhD in Health Psychology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She is also a professor in the faculty of Health Sciences at the  European University of the Atlantic, where she teaches courses in emotional psychology and motivation, and has created and directed a Master's Degree in Mindfulness for psychologists. She regularly collaborates with universities, hospitals, and institutions by offering keynote lectures, and has been invited to give talks on mindfulness and mental health at institutions such as the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation at the European Commission in Brussels.

Oliver Kirchhof is a coach, trainer and management consultant with over 20
years of work experience. He was born and raised in Cologne, is the father
of three children, and studied engineering and business administration at
the RWTH Aachen.
He dedicated the first half of his professional career to topics related to
corporate management, project management and business processes op-
timization. In 2014, his professional focus shifted towards guiding and sup-
porting corporate employees, particularly in times of professional transiti-
ons and personal transformations, in a mindful and compassionate way. In
projects, trainings and workshops, he employs approaches of change and
conflict management, mindfulness and systemic coaching. A main focus of
his trainings for managers and teams is the introduction of the concept of
mindful leadership, which is based on a combination of classic mindfulness
practices and novel neuroscientific findings. As a certified MBSR teacher, he
conducted mindfulness and compassion trainings in the CovSocial project,
and supported the masterclass of Prof. Dr. Tania Singer. Starting in 2023, he
will be one of the first coaches worldwide to conduct training of affect dyads
via the Humanize-App.

Birgit Kleim, PhD, earned her Ph.D. from King’s College London on early predictors of posttraumatic stress disorder, supervised by Anke Ehlers, PhD. She completed her postdoc and clinical training in cognitive behavior therapy at the same institution and then obtained faculty positions in Switzerland, at the University of Basel and the University of Zurich. Since 2016, she is full professor of Experimental Psychopathology and Psychotherapy at the University of Zurich and at the Psychiatric University Hospital. Her research focuses on understanding psychopathology and active psychotherapy mechanisms to augment effectiveness with focus on trauma-related disorders, anxiety and suicidality, as well as on understanding why some people succumb to stress while others are resilient. As a clinician scientist, she is dedicated to translating (basic) science findings to advance prevention and intervention science.

Dr. Fanny Lalot is a postdoctoral research associate in the Centre for Social Psychology at the University of Basel, which she joined in September 2021. She obtained her Ph.D. in social psychology from the Universities of Geneva and Lausanne in 2019. After graduation, she joined the Centre for the Study of Group Processes at the University of Kent as a postdoctoral research associate (2019-2021). Her research interests are broad and encompass moral behaviour in the broadest sense (e.g., proenvironmental, prosocial), human motivational systems, social influence and group processes, personality and perception of the future, as well as trust and its effects for societal cohesion.

Prof. Nava Levit Binnun is a neuroscientist and social entrepreneur, currently serving as the director of the Sagol Center for Brain and Mind at the Reichman University (former Interdisciplinary Center), Israel. Her research focuses on understanding healthy mind qualities such as self-regulation, empathy and compassion, and elucidating mechanisms that drive the beneficial effects of mindfulness and compassion practices. In 2009 she founded the Muda Institute for Mindfulness, Science and Society which operates as part of the Sagol Center and trains, develops and disseminates mindfulness-based interventions to various sectors of Israeli society. To date, the Muda Institute has trained over 250 mindfulness instructors (MBSR and MBCT protocols), has worked with more than 2000 school teachers in both Jewish and Arab schools, and is developing culturally-adapted mindfulness programs, as well as contemplative practices for cultivation of conflict-transforming mindsets.

Anthony D. Mancini, PhD, is a clinical psychologist who studies loss, trauma, social processes, and stressful life events. He earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Hunter College, and masters and doctoral degrees in clinical psychology from Columbia University. He is currently an Associate Professor of Psychology at Pace University. He has published extensively on psychological resilience, individual differences in responses to stress, and the role of social processes in adaptation. His work has examined events as varied as the Virginia Tech campus shootings, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, military deployment, traumatic injury, bereavement, having a child, and the COVID-19 pandemic. His theoretical work argues that acute adversity can directly improve, in some cases, psychological functioning, which he describes as “psychosocial gains from adversity.” He is currently Principal Investigator on a 4-year National Institutes of Health grant to study the economic and social consequences of COVID-19 for mental health. He also serves as the Chief Editor of Anxiety, Stress & Coping, a Taylor & Francis journal. His work has also been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Desert News, the Mercury News, and other outlets. He has published over 60 journal articles and book chapters.

Ann S. Masten, PhD, is a Regents Professor and Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota. She completed her undergraduate degree at Smith College, her PhD in psychology at the University of Minnesota, and a clinical internship at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. She directs the Project Competence Research on Risk and Resilience, focused on elucidating processes that promote positive development and prevent psychopathology in normative and adverse conditions. She is internationally known for her research on resilience in human development, especially in the context of homelessness, poverty, disaster, war, and migration. She is a past President of the Society for Research in Child Development and also Division 7 (developmental) of the American Psychological Association (APA). She has received numerous awards, including the Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contributions to Developmental Psychology from APA. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021. Dr. Masten has published more than 200 scholarly works, including the book, Ordinary Magic: Resilience in Development. She offers a free MOOC (Mass Open Online Course) on “Resilience in Children Exposed to Trauma, Disaster and War” that has been taken by thousands of participants from more than 180 countries.

Hannah Matthaeus is a PhD Student at the Social Neuroscience Lab. She
received a MSc in Clinical Psychology at the Technical University Dresden. In
the context of her PhD, Hannah is researching the impact of psychological
interventions on stress and loneliness using behavioral and biopsychosocial
methods. Additionally, she is interested in how these effects can be predicted
by stressor-related changes in vulnerability, resilience and social cohesion.

Katharina Schacht is a certified mindfulness and compassion teacher (MBSR,
MBCL, MBCT) and an alternative practitioner for psychotherapy. She works
as mindfulness-based therapist in mental health units, as mindfulness and
compassion trainer in companies, and is co-owner of MBSR-Eppendorf in
Hamburg (www.mbsr-eppendorf.de). In addition, she is a board member of
the German national MSBR organization.
Within the CovSocial project, she provided emotional trainings and mindful-
ness interventions.

Alicia Schowe is a Ph.D. student at the Max-Planck-Institute of Psychiatry, Dept. Trans-
lational Research in Psychiatry, Munich. In 2019, she completed her bache-
lor’s degree in psychology cum laude at Tilburg University, NL. Fascinated
by the biological underpinnings of stress-related psychiatric disorders, she
continued with a Research Master in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience,
specializing in Fundamental Neuroscience, at Maastricht University, NL. Af-
ter graduating cum laude with her internship project on stress hormone de-
terminants during pregnancy at the Max-Planck-Institute of Psychiatry, she
began her current Ph.D. position in November 2021 and joined the Graduate
School of Systemic Neurosciences (GSN, Munich) in October 2022. Her re-
search project focuses on unraveling the role of genetic risk and epigenetic
changes (i.e., DNA methylation) in the context of stressful life events and as-
sociated mental health impairments.

Dr. Sarita Silveira is a postdoc at the Social Neuroscience Lab, Berlin. She
holds a PhD in Human Biology from Ludwig-Maximilian-University, Munich,
and worked as a postdoc at the University of California San Diego, Neural
Engineering and Translation Labs, studying neurotechnologies for scalable
brain health mapping, monitoring and therapeutics. Her previous research
has focused on environmental and social impacts such as effects of adverse
childhood experiences and traumatic life events on neuro-cognitive develop-
ment and mental health outcomes. With her background in clinical psycho-
logy and neuroscience, her research interests revolve around the plasticity of
social, cognitive and affective functioning, and digital mobile technologies to
advance diagnostics and therapeutics for mental health and well-being.

Tania Singer, a professor of social neuroscience and psychology, heads the
Max Planck Society’s Social Neuroscience Lab, Berlin. After her PhD in psy-
chology at the Max-Planck-Institute for Human Development, she worked at
the Wellcome Centre for Imaging Neuroscience, at the Institute of Cognitive
Neuroscience in London and held the inaugural Chair of Social Neuroscience
and Neuroeconomics at the University of Zürich.
She is a world expert on compassion and empathy, and has a passion for
creating bridges between fields that typically never interact. Her research
focus is on the hormonal, neuronal, and developmental basis of human
sociality, empathy and compassion, and their malleability through mental
training. She has initiated and headed one of the largest meditation-based
secular mental training studies on compassion, the ReSource project. Lin-
king such findings to the field of (neuro)economics, she developed a Caring
Economics approach, developing new models of economy based on care
and social cohesion. She is also heading the CovSocial project, a large-scale
study on stress, resilience and social cohesion during the corona crisis. Tania
Singer is author of more than 160 scientific articles and book chapters and
edited together with Mathieu Ricard the two books Caring Economics (2015)
and Power and Care (2019). Throughout her life she has explored how inner
change can bring about societal change putting science in the service of so-
cietal transformation.

Andrew Steptoe is professor of psychology and epidemiology at University College London, where he is Head of the Department of Behavioural Science and Health, and director of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA). He graduated in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University and completed his doctorate at the University of Oxford. He was head of the Department of Psychology and Chair of the Academic Board at St. George’s Hospital Medical School before moving to University College London in 2000. He was British Heart Foundation Professor of Psychology from 2000 until 2016, and Director of the Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care from 2011 until 2017. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal Society of Biology, and the Academy for Social Sciences. Dr Steptoe’s research is primarily focused on links between psychological and social processes and physical health, and on population ageing. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he was co-investigator on the COVID-19 Social Study. He is author or editor of 22 books and around 950 journal articles and chapters.

Andero Uusberg is an Associate Professor of affective psychology at University of Tartu. He investigates how affective processes such as emotions and desires regulate, as well as are regulated by, cognitive processes such attention and appraisal. He is also involved in applying behavioral science for societal aims. Andero holds a PhD from University of Tartu and worked as a postdoc at Stanford University. In 2021 he served as a member of the COVID-19 scientific advisory council to the Estonian Government.

Prof. Dr. med. Dr. phil. Henrik Walter is psychiatrist, psychotherapist, neurologist and philosopher and since 2010 Director of the Research Division of Mind and Brain at the Department of Psychiatry at Europe’s largest University Clinic Charité in Berlin, where he also is Deputy Medical Director. He is an expert in cognitive neuroscience and clinical neuroscience, as well as in philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychiatry and interested to improve the practice of psychiatry and psychotherapy through the sciences of the mind.