Speakers

Roshi Joan Halifax, Ph.D. is a Buddhist teacher, Founder and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a social activist, author, and in her early years was an anthropologist at Columbia University (1964-68) and University of Miami School of Medicine (1970-72). She is a pioneer in the field of end-of-life care. She has lectured on the subject of death and dying at many academic institutions and medical centers around the world. She received a National Science Foundation Fellowship in Visual Anthropology, was an Honorary Research Fellow in Medical Ethnobotany at Harvard University, was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Library of Congress, received the Pioneer Medal for Outstanding Leadership in Health Care by HealthCare Chaplaincy, the Sandy MacKinnon Award from Covenant Health in Canada, Pioneer Medal for Outstanding Leadership in Health Care, received an Honorary DSc from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. She has received many other awards and honors from institutions around the world for her work as a social and environmental activist and in the end-of-life care field. 

From 1972-1975, she worked with psychiatrist Stanislav Grof at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center with dying cancer patients. She has continued to work with dying people and their families, and to teach health care professionals and family caregivers the psycho-social, ethical and spiritual aspects of care of the dying. She is Director of the Project on Being with Dying, and Founder of the Upaya Prison Project that develops programs on meditation for prisoners. She is also founder of the Nomads Clinic in Nepal. 

Her books include: The Human Encounter with Death (with Stanislav Grof); The Fruitful Darkness, A Journey Through Buddhist Practice; Simplicity in the Complex: A Buddhist Life in America; Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Wisdom in the Presence of Death; Standing at the Edge:Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet; Sophie Learns to Be Brave; and her latest work, In a Moment, In a Breath. 

Please view on Kyoto University’s website – the link is below.

https://www.gsais.kyoto-u.ac.jp/staff/deroche/en_index.html

Martin Picard, PhD is the Science of Health Professor of Behavioral Medicine at Columbia University where he leads the Mitochondrial Psychobiology Group (www.picardlab.org). He co-directs the Columbia Science of Health Program, which places health and healing, rather than disease, at the center of medicine. He is the founder and president of the Energy and Healing Institute ⎸EHI, a nonprofit platform organization advancing rigorous science, transformative innovation, and the bridging of science and the human experience in service of human flourishing.   

Martin’s life is dedicated to research, innovation, and communication. Among his scientific contributions, his laboratory has produced the first atlas of human brain mitochondria, discovered that hair graying is reversible, quantified the energetic cost of stress, showed that mitochondria regulate how rapidly human cells age, and developed high-precision, scalable assays of mitochondrial health. 

Martin received his BSc Honours in neuroimmunology and a PhD in mitochondrial biology of aging (2012) from McGill University, Canada. He completed postdoctoral training in mitochondrial genetics with Doug Wallace at the University of Pennsylvania, and studied the energetics of stress with Bruce McEwen at the Rockefeller University. He opened his lab at Columbia in 2015. Outside the lab, Martin is the author of the forthcoming ENERGY book, offering a scientifically-informed, energetically-inspired perspective on health and healing. A leading voice on the relationship between energy, health, and the mind, he brings insights from mitochondrial biology and lived human experience into conversation with scientists, clinicians, and the public. With his wife, biophysicist Nirosha Murugan, he co-founded The Science and Experience of Energy, a growing publication and community platform that brings the science of energy into public conversation, helping people understand why energy matters in everyday life.