CONFERENCE BROCHURE - Mind & Life Institute

Mind and Life Summer Research InstituteJune 16 – June 22, 2012George P. Chrousos, M.D., is Professor and Chairman of the First Department of Pediatrics at the Universityof Athens School of Medicine, Athens, Greece, and former Chief of the Pediatric and ReproductiveEndocrinology Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development(NICHD), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, Maryland. He also has held the UNESCOChair on Adolescent Health Care since 2010 and held the Kluge Chair on Technology and Society, Libraryof Congress, Washington, D.C., in 2011. Professor Chrousos is internationally recognized for hisresearch on the glucocorticoid signaling system of the cell, on the diseases of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenalaxis, and on the physiological and molecular mechanisms of stress. His contributionsspan a range of medical disciplines, including Medicine, Pediatrics, Endocrinology, Psychiatry,Rheumatology, Allergy, Surgery, Oncology and Reproductive Medicine. Dr. Chrousos has written over600 original scientific papers and his work has been cited in more than 57,000 other scientific articles,an irrefutable testimony to the importance and influence of his research. With a Hirsch index of 120,he is one of the most cited scientists internationally (ISI highly cited) both in Clinical Medicine and inBiology and Biochemistry and the highest cited clinical endocrinologist and pediatrician in the world.Dr. Chrousos has received numerous national and international awards and has given many lecturesin the USA, Europe and Japan. He was inducted as a Master of both the American College of Endocrinologyand the American College of Physicians. He is former president of the European Societyof Clinical Investigation. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine, The National Academies,Washington, D.C., USA, and the Academia Europaea, London, UK. Recently he was honoredwith the 2011 Aristeion Bodossaki Award, the highest distinction for accomplishment in the Sciencesin Greece. In 2012 he received the Albert Struyvenberg Medal of the European Society of Clinical Investigation.Linda Wilcoxon Craighead, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at Emory University in Atlanta andhas been the Director of their Clinical Psychology Training Program since 2003. Dr. Craighead receivedher B.A. from Vanderbilt University and her Ph.D. in Psychology from The Pennsylvania StateUniversity. Prior to moving to Emory she had been on the faculty at The Pennsylvania State University,The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and The University of Colorado at Boulder. Dr.Craighead has published extensively in the areas of eating disorders and weight concerns. She developedand evaluated an intervention called Appetite Awareness Training (AAT), described in The AppetiteAwareness Workbook: How to listen to your body and overcome binge eating, overeating andpreoccupation with food (New Harbinger, 2006). AAT incorporates aspects of mindful eating into thewell-established tradition of self-monitoring in cognitive behavioral approaches to eating and weightproblems. AAT teaches individuals to tune in to internal cues, particularly moderate hunger and moderatefullness, and to use their heightened awareness of current sensations as well as recall of past sensationsto make more conscious eating decisions in the present moment. Increased awareness of selfin the present moment reduces vulnerability to mindless overeating. Dr. Craighead teaches workshops,nationally and internationally, providing training in the application of appetite awareness to a range ofproblems related to eating and weight. Dr. Craighead is currently working on modifying and applyingappetite awareness for children and adolescents, particularly as a tool to prevent or intervene early inthe development of obesity.Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D., Richard J. Davidson is Founder and Chair of the Center for InvestigatingHealthy Minds at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Director of theLaboratory for Affective Neuroscience and the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behaviorat the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He was educated at New York University and Harvard University,where he received his B.A. and Ph.D., respectively, in psychology. Over the course of his researchcareer he has focused on the relationship between brain and emotion. He is currently the WilliamJames Professor and Vilas Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin.He is co-author or editor of fourteen books, including Visions of Compassion: Western Scientistsand Tibetan Buddhists Examine Human Nature, and The Handbook of Affective Science. He is theauthor (with Sharon Begley) of the 2012 book, The Emotional Life of Your Brain, published by Penguin.19