Dr. Weng will bring you into the dynamic research journey of “measuring the immeasurable." She will present pioneering quantitative and qualitative scientific methods she applies in the exploration of how compassion and mindfulness meditation impact both brain and behavior. She will describe her groundbreaking work that illuminates how compassion meditation increases both altruistic behavior towards strangers and neural responses to suffering. Inspired by working with diverse clients as a clinical psychologist, she updated her research methods to include individualized machine learning and community engagement with the East Bay Meditation Center to better encompass diversity among meditators and their mental states and brain patterns. This resulted in transforming the heart of the research process through inclusive reciprocal communication. Her innovative work is transforming contemplative neuroscience through approaches that can “read the mind” during meditation.

This keynote is part of a two-session series featuring Helen Weng offered as part of the 2023 Contemplation by Design Summit. Attendees are encouraged to register for one or all of the sessions. 
The first session is on October 30, and is titled iPause #9: Cultivating your Inner Wisdom and Intuition with Helen Weng

Helen Weng, PhD, is a researcher at the Osher Center for Integrative Health at the University of California, San Francisco. She is a clinical psychologist and neuroscientist who studies how compassion and mindfulness meditation may cultivate social and emotional health. She has advanced the neuroscience of meditation by developing inclusive approaches to studying diverse mental states and meditators using individualized machine learning applied to functional MRI and community engagement. Dr. Weng has received grants from the National Institutes of Health, UCSF, and the Mind and Life Institute, and her work has been covered by NPR, the Huffington Post, and the New York Times. She had the honor of presenting work to His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 2012 and 2016, and in 2019, Dr. Weng was named one of the Powerful Women of the Mindfulness Movement by Mindful Magazine.

CBD 2023: Transforming Heart and Mind: Developing inclusive approaches to studying the neuroscience of meditation with Helen Weng is part of the free Contemplation by Design Summit, Oct. 24-Nov. 3, 2023.

The full Summit schedule is posted at: http://contemplation.stanford.edu/summit. All events are FREE and online.

Registration opens September 12, 2023