DIETRICH STOUT
Director,  Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture | Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology
Emory University

"Apart from being the Director of the Center, I think of myself as an “experimental cognitive archaeologist.” I am interested in the evolution of the human brain and cognition and particularly what we can learn about this from ancient stone tools. I do more or less “conventional” archaeological work including excavations and the analysis of museum collections, but my passion is for experimental approaches that allow me to apply behavioral and neuro-science methods. A big focus is on processes of tool-making teaching, learning, and skill acquisition, which involves me with topics like motor resonance, inter-individual alignment, communication, coordination, and empathy that I think are also of interest to many of you. The closest I’ve gotten to talking about “compassion” is probably this talk (https://vimeo.com/1098193638/021154be07) I gave on the evolution of cooperation – it should give a good idea of where I’m coming from if you’d like to dig deeper. But mostly I just look forward to learning a lot!"

BRENDAN OZAWA-DE SILVA
Associate Teaching Professor, Center for Contemplative Sciences and Compassion-Based Ethics
Emory University

"My background is highly interdisciplinary, with graduate work and interests in history, religious studies (primarily Buddhism), psychology, cognitive science, philosophy, and education. I also work between research and applied settings (education, healthcare and prisons). Recently I’ve been trying to find ways to bridge the gap between (a) lab-based research on compassion, empathy and mindfulness and (b) interventions and programs, particularly in education and public health. Specifically, I’ve been trying to reconceptualize compassion and empathy in ways that would be more tractable in fields like education and public health, and develop theoretical models and eventually methodologies to support this work. This has led me and my colleagues to exploring empathy as a socially enacted interpersonal practice and compassion as one possible manifestation of that. I’m also very interested in developmental approaches to empathy and compassion, and the ways they are learned implicitly through relationships and modeling."

DARWIN GUEVARRA
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology | Director, Affective Science and Psychophysiology Lab
Miami University

"I am an affective scientist interested in well-being and health, particularly in how people regulate their internal experiences and engage with others in prosocial ways. My work examines low-effort, scalable strategies that can improve psychological and physiological functioning.

In the context of this workshop, I am interested in how compassion, compassionate responding, and broader forms of prosociality contribute to well-being and health. I approach these questions from an affect regulation perspective. Rather than assuming compassion emerges naturally, I am especially interested in the motivational and contextual barriers that may constrain compassionate responding. When do people withdraw from compassion? When is it effortful? Under what conditions does it become sustainable and health promoting?

I am also interested in how compassion can be cultivated in everyday life. What are the most psychologically tractable ways to promote compassionate responding, and how can we design interventions that meaningfully shift both behavior and downstream health outcomes? I am particularly excited to think across levels of analysis, including evolutionary, neural, social, and applied perspectives, and to explore collaborative projects that integrate compassion science with health and flourishing."

AUBREY KELLY
Associate Professor, Department of Psychology
Emory University

"I am a behavioral neuroendocrinologist interested in how the brain allows animals to get along in groups. I have studied grouping behavior in a variety of species of birds, as well as rodents. Recently, we have been examining neural mechanisms that facilitate positive social interactions between strangers in spiny mice. This has led to a wee existential crisis, and I can’t help but wonder whether animals (some, any?!) genuinely want to or like to affiliate with strangers, or even groups, or if animals that exhibit such behavior are primarily just incredibly socially tolerant. My lab is in the process of attempting to disentangle wanting to affiliate with strangers and groups from simply tolerating others. I can’t help but think of my own experiences – I am often obnoxiously polite and friendly with strangers I encounter at the grocery store, for example, but I would much prefer grocery shopping in a store free of people (think about how efficient that would be!). At the grocery store, on a train, in an airport… I tolerate the many people I encounter that I do not know and do not particularly wish to know. “To tolerate people” seems to carry a negative connotation. Yet, tolerating others seems crucial for the success of species that live in large groups / societies – including humans. I am interested in considering how tolerance is related to compassion; for example, is it a pre-requisite? Can compassion grow out tolerance? Can we teach and encourage tolerant behavior as a baby step toward teaching/promoting compassion – something our society is currently in desperate need of?"

TIMOTHY HARRISON
Director of CBCT®, Center for Contemplative Sciences and Compassion-Based Ethics
Emory University

"I am the Director of CBCT (Cognitively Based Compassion Training) at Emory University's Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics. I bring to this role a distinctive combination of long-term contemplative practice and expertise as an educator and trainer — not a bench scientist, but someone deeply committed to the rigorous, applied cultivation of compassion.

CBCT is a secular, evidence-informed program rooted in classical contemplative traditions, designed on the premise that compassion is not a fixed trait but a capacity that can be systematically cultivated. I have contributed to the field as co-author of a paper proposing an theoretical integrative model of compassion training, and have served as co-investigator on multiple research projects, overseeing teacher training and ensuring program fidelity.

At the CMBC workshop, I bring the perspective of an educator and practitioner on how the scientific understanding of compassion translates into effective training and real-world application. I am equally here to learn — drawing on cross-disciplinary exchange to explore how emerging research might help make CBCT more effective and impactful for the individuals and communities it serves."

ROBERT ROESER
Alice Valli Professor of Compassion and Ethics & Professor of Behavioral, Social, and Health Education Sciences
Emory University

Robert W. Roeser is the Alice Valli Professor of Compassion and Ethics and Professor of Behavioral Social and Health Education Sciences at Emory University. He also serves as the Research Director for the Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-based Ethics in the College of Arts and Sciences. His training is in education, developmental science, clinical social work and religion.

Dr. Roeser’s research interests include adolescence and early adulthood, schooling from Pre-K to College/University as a central cultural context of students’ academic, social-emotional, ethical and identity development, and the role of mindfulness and compassion training for teachers and students. He is a thought leader in the fields of Contemplative Education and Developmental Contemplative Science.

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/robertwroeser

MLI Podcast https://podcast.mindandlife.org/rob-roeser/

MLI Education of the Heart Dialogue https://educationoftheheartdialogue.org

PETER HITCHCOCK
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
Emory University

"I'm Pete, an Assistant Professor at Emory Psychology and director of the Translational Lab, where we study when and why decision-making goes awry in depression and anxiety disorders and how to improve it.

Recently, we've been especially interested in how to study self-judgmental thinking and rumination and worry rigorously. Although we mostly focus on these negative thinking patterns, I started my research career working with Willoughby Britton on contemplative techniques. I'm still quite interested in states of mindfulness and self-compassion—both in their own right, and for what they can tell us about the antipodal thinking patterns that we study in my lab.

In the workshop, I'm excited to connect with contemplative science researchers at Emory. And I'm excited to think about the evolution, and non-human parallels of, (self-)compassion and judgment, and to think about what compassion for the self does (and does not) share with compassion toward others and groups."

SARAH BROSNAN
Distinguished University Professor, Psychology, Philosophy, and Neuroscience, Department of Psychology | Co-Director, Language Research Center
Georgia State University

I am a Distinguished University Professor of Psychology, Philosophy and Neuroscience and Co-Director of the Language Research Center at Georgia State University, where I head the CEBUS lab.

My research focuses on decision-making in humans and other primates, particularly decisions relating to cooperation and inequality, and how those decision processes evolved and are influenced by social and environmental factors. Although I primarily work in primates, recently I’ve become interested in how other species, particularly those that are traditionally viewed as more solitary and therefore not good candidates for social cognition, such as reptiles, might show the same behaviors.

Although I haven’t directly studied compassion, I’m particularly interested in this workshop because, first, I am interested in how compassion does (or does not) affect cooperation and prosocial decision-making, and second, I find these interdisciplinary approaches to be the most informative (aside from currently being faculty in psychology, philosophy and neuroscience, my training is in biology and anthropology and am always thinking about how work from one perspective informs another), so I am really looking forward to it!

OLGA KLIMECKI
Assistant Professor, Head of Department of Biological Psychology
University of Innsbruck, Austria

Olga looks forward to learning from the other participants and is curious about the inspirations and potential projects that will evolve from the CMBC 2026. 

Olga´s research focuses on the promotion of individual and community well-being across the lifespan. Olga and her team use randomized controlled studies to test the causal impact of behavioral, cognitive, and emotional interventions with a focus on mindfulness-based and compassion-based interventions. Olga has been Co-PI of the longest meditation study to date – the Medit-Ageing / Silver Santé study. Olga and her team are currently particularly curious about the impact of socio-emotional learning interventions on the well-being of adolescents and their teachers. 

Olga has practicing mindfulness meditation since 2008. She is a certified mindfulness teacher who loves embodied mindfulness practices incorporating movement and dance. 

Website at University of Innsbruck: https://www.uibk.ac.at/de/psychologie/mitarbeiter/klimecki-lenz/ 

Olga´s website: www.olgaklimecki.com 

Recent Mind and Life Webinar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecksNDgmRsQ&list=PLutha4Aw46O3um4f_VvUk1VcDroM5NbeV&index=5 

JUDITH M. BURKART
Professor, Department of Evolutionary Anthropology
University of Zurich, Switzerland

"As an evolutionary anthropologist, I am interested in the origin of human traits, by studying nonhuman primates. With my research group, we are particularly interested in how social, motivational and cognitive processes interact in the “big-C” contexts in which humans excel: Cooperation, Communication, Cognition and Culture. Among nonhuman primates, we are particularly interested in the marmoset monkeys that we study in the wild and in captivity because like in humans, the entire group helps raising the offspring. They thus help us to test the Cooperative Breeding Model of Human Evolution. Our strong potential for compassion may well reflect our legacy as cooperatively breeding great apes: On the one hand, we inherited from our last common ancestor with the other great apes a strong cognitive component to understand when others are in a tricky, disadvantageous situation; on the other hand, a motivational component to also be highly willing to intervene and improve such a situation may convergently  have evolved in the context cooperative breeding."

Topics of Interest:  what is compassion (in contrast to empathy, but also contagion, and prosociality), what are cognitive and what are motivational components and do they have different origins in evolution and ontogeny.

Evolutionary Cognition Group

ROBIN NUSSLOCK
Julie and Frank Cohen Family Professor of Social Sciences, Director of Clinical Psychology, Director of Clinical Training
Northwestern University

Affective & Clinical Neuroscience Lab

JENNIFER MASCARO
Associate Professor, Department of Family and Preventative Medicine
Emory University School of Medicine

My program of research is grounded in a sustained interest in compassion science—an interdisciplinary field concerned with understanding how compassion can be cultivated, operationalized, and applied to improve human well-being, particularly in clinical contexts. Our research explores both the internal capacities that support compassion and the observable ways compassion is expressed in clinical interactions. We integrate quantitative, qualitative, and translational approaches to identify mechanisms through which compassion can be reliably trained and sustained, to understand how care-seekers feel held in compassion, to identify the impact of compassionate care on patient outcomes, and to develop interventions that enhance both provider well-being and patient outcomes.

Some relevant publications include:

1. Ozawa-de Silva, B. R., & Mascaro, J. S. (2026). What’s next for compassion science? A multi-scalar framework for measurement and public health action. International Journal of Wellbeing, 16(2). 

2. Mascaro, J. S., Palmer, P. K., Ash, M. J., Florian, M. P., Kaplan, D. M., Palitsky, R., ... & Grant, G. H. (2025). A randomized controlled trial of a compassion-centered spiritual health intervention to improve hospital inpatient outcomes. Plos one, 20(3), e0313602.

3. Mascaro, J. S., Palmer, P. K., Willson, M., Ash, M. J., Florian, M. P., Srivastava, M., ... & Raison, C. L. (2023). The language of compassion: Hospital chaplains’ compassion capacity reduces patient depression via other-oriented, inclusive language. Mindfulness, 14(10), 2485-2498. 

4. Mascaro, J. S., Florian, M. P., Ash, M. J., Palmer, P. K., Frazier, T., Condon, P., & Raison, C. (2020). Ways of knowing compassion: How do we come to know, understand, and measure compassion when we see it?. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 547241.

DAVID ADDISS
Interim Director of the Focus Area for Compassion and Ethics, Task Force for Global Health
Emory University

I am currently interim director of the Focus Area for Compassion and Ethics (FACE) at the Task Force for Global Health, an affiliate of Emory University. As a medical epidemiologist at the US Centers for Disease Control who took a career ‘swerve’ to lead the science and spirituality program at the Fetzer Institute, I am interested in the potential of epidemiology – the science that guides global health – for studying, understanding, and promoting compassion at the collective and population levels. In March, 2026, the International Journal of Wellbeing published a special issue, Towards an Epidemiology of Compassion, which highlighted key principles and advanced scholarly thought on this topic. In the workshop, I'm looking forward to learning from an interdisciplinary group of compassion scholars, with an eye towards further exploring the potential contribution of epidemiology to compassion science.

ZANNA CLAY
Professor, Department of Psychology
Durham University, UK

I am a comparative and developmental psychologist who studies the evolutionary and developmental origins of empathy. To do this, I study great apes, particularly chimpanzees and bonobos as well as young human children using a cross-cultural approach. A lot of my research has investigated behavioural expressions of empathy in naturalistic scenarios, but I've also become increasingly interested in the underlying mechanisms of empathy to examine which cognitive, affective and social processes drive pro-sociality.

What I'd particularly like to get out of the workshop is to examine the proposed distinction between compassion and empathy, whether and what this differentiation means in real terms, and its evolutionary basis. There's a lot of discussion about the separability of compassion and empathy, with some evidence of dissociable neural signatures, but this is much less clear when studying natural behaviour. I would like to think about what that means in real terms when you’re studying its developmental basis and how we could study that in great apes. I’d like to use new insights from the workshop to improve my empirical approaches and rigour to these questions and to gain a broader stance on the bigger question of what drives pro-social behaviour in humans and other animals and what we can do to promote it. So lots of ideas and looking forward to a great discussion!