TIBETAN MEDICINE CONFERENCE - SPECIALTY COMMITTEE OF TIBETAN MEDICINE OF WFCMS
speakers
Jiumei Pengcuo - Keynote
Dr. Jiumei Pengcuo, chief physician, is currently the chairman of Qinghai JiuMei Tibetan Medicine Co., Ltd., president of Qinghai Jiumai Tibetan Medicine, and chairman of the Tibetan medicine committee of WFCMS. Jiumei Pengcuo is a Tibetan medicine diabetes specialist working in Tibetan medicine and research for over 40 years. He has published more than 100 papers and 10 books on topics related to Tibetan medicine, has been awarded over 30 national and provincial awards, and retains 50 Tibetan medicine patents. He is a recipient of State Council & Qinghai Provincial Special Allowance for Distinguished Experts, and Academic Leader of National Key Disciplines for State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Continued>
Dr. Rudolph Tanzi is a Professor of Neurology and holder of the Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Endowed Chair in Neurology at Harvard University. At the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Dr. Tanzi serves as the Vice-Chair of Neurology (Research) and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit, which consists of eight laboratories investigating the genetic causes of Alzheimer’s disease.
Dr. Tanzi has been investigating the molecular and genetic basis of neurological disease since 1980, when he participated in the pioneering study that led to location of the Huntington's disease gene, the first disease gene to be found by genetic linkage analysis. Since 1982, Dr. Tanzi has investigated the genetic causes of Alzheimer's disease (AD). He co-discovered all three genes that cause early-onset familial AD, including the first familial AD gene, known as the amyloid β-protein (A4) precursor (APP), and the presenilin genes. In 1993, Dr. Tanzi discovered the gene responsible for the neurological disorder known as Wilson's disease, and over the past 25 years, he has collaborated on studies identifying several other disease genes including those causing neurofibromatosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and autism. Continued>
Rudolph Tanzi - Keynote
Yumba - Keynote
Yumba, researcher, vice director of Lhasa Men-Tsee-Khang (Tibetan Medical & Astrological Institute). He focuses on Tibetan medicine and astro-science research work. He is the editor of Snowland Tibetan Medicine Calendar Series and 20 other books, and has published over 30 academic papers. He is currently serving as the Director of the Tibetan Cultural Protection and Development Association; Standing Committee member of the National Medicine Association and vice president of the Tibetan Medicine Branch of the National Medicine Association. He also serves as vice chairman of Tibetan medicine committee of WFCMS and visiting scholar at Harvard University.
Janet Gyatso - Keynote
Janet Gyatso is Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies at Harvard University, where she serves on the faculty of the Divinity School, in the Study of Religion, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and Inner Asian and Altaic Studies.She is currently Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs in the Divinity School. Her writing has centered on Tibetan Buddhism and its cultural and intellectual history. She is the author of Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet. Previous books include Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary, as well as several edited volumes. Continued>
Thupten Phuntsok
Thupten Phuntsok, DTM, is a professor at the Tibetology Department of Southwestern Minzu University. He is an internationally renowned scholar on Tibetan studies and Tibetan medical research. For the past four decades, his research has focused on a wide range of fields from Tibetan history and Tibetan medicine to Tibetan astro-science. He has published nine books, more than 100 articles, and given over 20 lectures both in China and abroad.
Nima Cireng, professor, doctoral advisor, has studied under famous Tibetan medicine master Troru Tsenam. The Ministry of Personnel, Ministry of Health, and Chinese Medicine Administration jointly awarded him the teacher certificate. In 1987, he was appointed vice president of Tibetan Medicine School. In 1989, he was appointed chair of the Tibetan Medicine Department at Tibet University, associate dean of the college, associate professor and dean. He also serves as honorary chairman of the Tibetan Medicine Committee of WFCMS and Standing Committee member of the Chinese National Medicine Association.
Nima Cireng
Lobsang Tenzin Rakdho, DTM, was born in 1956, near Chamdo in Eastern Tibet. At age 3, he was recognized by Takpo Dorje Chang, a renowned Lama, as the reincarnation of Rakdho Rinpoche of Ganden Cho Khor Monastery. He received his formal monastic education at an early age and secretly continued to find teachers even during the peak of the Cultural Revolution. From 1974 until 1979, he studied Tibetan medical theory and practice under the great master Kunga. In 1979, Professor Rakdho Lobsang Tenzin continued his studies at Lhasa Mentsekhang with renowned scholars, such as Toru Tsenam Rinpoche and Lobsang Wangchuck in linguistics, Buddhist philosophy, Astrological Science and Tibetan Medicine.
From 1983 to 1985, Professor Rakdho was engaged in collection, research and publication of rare Tibetan medical, history and Buddhist texts. In 1986, he was the editor of the Tibetan People’s Publication, in the Tibetan Autonomous Region. From 1987 to 1992, he also worked as a lecturer at the Tibetan Astro Medical College, Himachal in India, teaching Tibetan medical theory and practice, as well as, linguistics, Astrological Sciences and Buddhist philosophy. Professor Rakdho taught at the Department of Tibetan Medicine at the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies (CUTS), in Sarnath, Varanasi from 1993 to 1996. Subsequently, he was honored as the Senior Lecturer, and in 1998, was appointed as a Professor of Tibetan Medicine. He was a visiting professor at Indiana University during the year 2009. Currently, he is the Dean of the Sowarigpa Department and teaches, conducts research, and treats patients at the CUTS medical clinic. He has manufactured more than 100 different medicines and continues to research and guide students in drug design research.
Lobsang Tenzin Rakdho
Paul J. Mills is Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health, Director of the Center of Excellence for Research and Training in Integrative Health, and Interim Chief of the Behavioral Medicine Division at the University of California, San Diego. He is currently serving as Director of Research for the Chopra Foundation. He has expertise in Integrative Medicine and psychoneuroimmune processes in wellness and disease, publishing numerous manuscripts and book chapters on these topics. He is Principal Investigator of the Self-Directed Biological Transformation Initiative, a randomized trial that is examining the psychosocial and biological effects of a whole-systems Ayurvedic Medicine intervention for wellbeing.
Paul Mills
Vincanne Adams
Vincanne Adams, PhD, is Professor and Vice Chair in the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and joint program in Medical Anthropology at UC Berkeley. She has over twenty years of research experience and publications on Tibetan medicine, based on field research in Lhasa and Eastern Tibet. She is author or co-editor for many books, including Medicine Between Science and Religion: Explorations on Tibetan Grounds (Berghahn Press), and more recently, Metrics: What Counts in Global Health (Duke University Press). She is Editor-in-Chief for the journal Medical Anthropology Quarterly, and the co-series editor for the book series Critical Global Health: Evidence, Efficacy, Ethnography (with Duke University Press).
Alejandro Chaoul is an assistant professor and Director of Education at the Integrative Medicine Program, Department of Palliative, Rehabilitation and Integrative Medicine at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. He conducts research using mind-body techniques with cancer patients, holds group and individual meditation classes and clinic for cancer patients and their support system, and directs the education programs. He is also an associate faculty member at The McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics, where he teaches medical students in the areas of spirituality, complementary and integrative medicine, and end of life care.
Alejandro has taught at Rice University, the University of Houston and the Jung Center of Houston, and has been applying mind-body practices in the health area since 1999 in the Texas Medical Center. In addition he collaborates in the area of interfaith and contemplative practices at The Rothko Chapel and the Boniuk Center for Religious Tolerance at Rice University. Since 1995, he has been teaching Tibetan meditation and Tibetan yogic practices under the auspices of the Ligmincha Institute in various parts of the U.S.A., Latin America and Europe.
His research and publications focus on mind-body practices in integrative care, examining how these practices can reduce chronic stress, anxiety and sleep disorders and improve quality of life. He is the author of “Chod Practice in the Bon Tradition” (SnowLion, 2009) and has also published in the area of religion and medicine, medical anthropology and the interface of spirituality and healing. His upcoming book is on Tibetan Yogas for Health and Wellbeing (Hay House)
Alejandro Chaoul
Tenzin Choedon
Tenzin Choedon is a research associate currently working in the
International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), Delhi. She has done her schooling from Tibetan Children’s Village School, graduated with Honours in B.Sc. Zoology from Miranda House, Delhi University in 1998 and post graduated with M.Sc. Biotechnology from Jamia Hamdard in 2000. Recently she received her doctorate in Biomedical Science from Bharathidasan University, Tamil Nadu.
Tenzin was recruited as research associate in ICGEB (2000) where she has been actively involved in anticancer research programs pioneered by Dr. Vijay Kumar. She has attained expertise in identification of anticancer drugs in onco-mouse models and cell culture and has published papers in peer reviewed journals. She has been an avid participant in a number of conferences relevant to her area of research and has been actively involved in different scientific programs organized in cancer therapeutics.
Eliot Tokar is a Tibetan medicine doctor, scholar, writer and lecturer. He has practiced Tibetan medicine in the US since 1994. Eliot was apprenticed to the esteemed lama/physician Dr. Trogawa Rinpoche, founder of the Chagpori Tibetan Medical Institute in India. He has advised organizations such as the American Medical Student Association and lectured at institutions such as Yale Univ., Princeton Univ., University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, NY Botanical Garden and the Asia Society. His publications have appeared in US and international journals.
TIBETAN MEDICINE
BEHAVIORAL, DIETARY, HERBAL & PHYSICAL THERAPIES
151-31 88th St., # 2D, Queens, NY 11414-2024 USA
Phone: (718) 641-7323
Mobile: (718) 483-4710
Eliot Tokar
Can (Martin) Zhang
Can (Martin) Zhang is an assistant professor in Neurology at Harvard Medical School and a principle investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital. Zhang’s research is focused on identifying the mechanism of neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), with the goal of identifying molecular components and biomarkers that will translate into the development of novel therapeutic strategies for AD. Specifically, Zhang is investigating the therapeutic potential of novel compounds that utilize different mechanisms underlying AD, which include the γ-secretase modulators, curcumin analogs and natural compounds. Additionally, Zhang is interested in investigating the roles of biomarkers in enriched environment, e.g. mindfulness and physical exercise.
Zhang Yi
Zhang Yi is Dean of the College of Ethnic Medicine, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. He is the Director of, and professor at, the National Institute of Ethnic Medicine. He is a recipient of State Council Special Allowance for Distinguished Experts, the review expert of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Chinese medical association science awards, as well as the vice president of the Chinese Association of Ethnic Medicine. ZhangYi's research interests are the basic research of Tibetan medicine for the treatment of plateau diseases and minority medical informatics.
Surya Pierce
Surya Pierce MD is an assistant professor of medicine at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. He is board certified in Family Medicine and Integrative Medicine (ABOIM.) His clinical work and teaching is focused as the UNM Center for Life, an academic interdisciplinary integrative medicine specialty clinic. Surya’s approach to medicine has been greatly influenced by yoga therapy (yoga chikitsa), Ayurveda and Traditional Tibetan Medicine. His professional interests also include botanical medicine and contemplative practices.
Eric Jacobson
Eric Jacobson, Ph.D., M.P.H., is a medical anthropologist and clinical trialist who investigates alternative medicines at Harvard Medical School. His dissertation investigated the subjective experiences and classical treatments of psychiatric illnesses among Tibetan refugees in northern India. Since then he has published on the placebo effect in acupuncture and its modification by different qualities of patient-therapist interaction.
Dylan Lott
Dylan T. Lott, PhD is a Research Associate with the Center for Healthy Minds (UW-Madison). As an anthropologist, Dylan explores the relation between culture, mind, body and brain through the lens of specific human societies – their histories, languages and practices. His dissertation work examined the continuing dialogue between Buddhists and Western scientists and how this encounter has helped shape contemplative research, Tibetan Buddhist monastic education, and the unfolding collaboration between them. Dylan’s current research examines the psychophysiological effects of long-term meditative practice on the aging process and end of life measures. He also studies the impact of these practices on the experience of grief, bereavement, and dying.
Tawni Tidwell
Tawni Tidwell, TMD, PhD Candidate, is a Tibetan medical doctor and biological and cultural anthropology doctoral candidate. She studied Tibetan medicine at Men-Tsee-Khang in northern India for the first two and a half years of her Tibetan medical education, and completed her last two years and internship in eastern Tibet at the Tibetan Medical College of Qinghai University in Xining, China, graduating there in July 2015. She completed her internship in gastroenterology at Qinghai Provincial Tibetan Medical Hospital. Her Tibetan medical college graduating thesis on cancer in Tibetan medicine was published in the Journal for Tibetan Medical Education in Lhasa in April 2017. She is completing her doctoral work at Emory University, focusing her dissertation on the entrainment process for learning Tibetan medical diagnostics of Tibetan medical conceptions of cancer and related metabolic disorders. She is an advisor and assistant translator for the Tibetan Community Health Network, an online health science information resource in Tibetan language for Tibetan communities founded by former Emory-Tibet Science Initiative translator Sangey Tashi. Tidwell is dedicated to facilitating dialogue and collaborations between Tibetan medicine and Western science, and sees patients privately in Atlanta. She studied physics and earth systems at Stanford graduating in 2004.
Carol Worthman
Carol M. Worthman is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology at Emory University (Atlanta), where she also directs the Laboratory for Comparative Human Biology. Her foci comprise comparative interdisciplinary research on human development, and biocultural bases of differential mental and physical health. She has conducted cross-cultural biosocial research in thirteen countries, including Tibet, Nepal, Kenya, Egypt, Japan, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam and South Africa, as well as in rural, urban, and semi-urban areas of the United States. For over 20 years, she conducted collaborative research in the Great Smoky Mountains Study, a large, longitudinal, population-based developmental epidemiological project in western North Carolina. Current work includes a study of the impact of television on adolescent sleep/wake patterns in the context of a controlled experiment with Vietnamese villages lacking both television and electricity. She has led development and implementation of the neuroscience component in the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative since its inception in 2008. Roll-out of the program in the monasteries is now in its fourth year.
Dr. Phurpa Wangchuk is a NHMRC Research Fellow at James Cook University (JCU) in Australia. He completed his PhD in Medicinal/Natural Products Chemistry with examiners' special commendation for ‘Outstanding Thesis’ from the University of Wollongong, Australia. He obtained his M.Sc. (Medicinal Chemistry) from the University of Wollongong and Post Graduate Diploma in Research Methodology from the DBL-Centre for Health Research and Development, Copenhagen University, Denmark under DANIDA fellowship. Currently, his research involves the biodiscovery and molecular characterization of the anthelmintic and anti-inflammatory compounds from medicinal plants, worms and insect-fungi using advanced scientific technologies and experimental models. Prior to his appointment at JCU, he worked for 12 years in Bhutan as a Senior Research Officer and the Head of the Research and Development Section of the Manjong Sorig Pharmaceuticals, Ministry of Health. There, he was fully involved with the scientific validation, quality control and biodiscovery of medicinal plants used in Sowa Rigpa medicine (derived from Tibetan medicine).
He has published more than 33 journal papers in the national and international journals, 2 medicinal plant books, 2 volumes of plant monographs, 4 conference proceeding papers and 3 book chapters – all centered on Sowa Rigpa medicine. He is in the Editorial Board of the international ‘Journal of Biologically Active Natural Products from Nature (Taylor and Francis publisher)’, and served as an Editor of ‘Manjong Sorig Journal’. He is a council member of the ‘International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine (IASTAM) and an invited reviewer of many reputed international journals including Scientific Reports-Nature, Journal of Ethnopharmacology (Elsevier), BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, Natural Product Communications, International Journal of Parasitology, Phytochemistry Letters, and Bhutan Health Journal.
Based on his meritorious research output, Dr. Wangchuk was awarded a total of 3 fellowships/grants and 7 awards/prizes in the last 5 years. His most prestigious fellowships are NHMRC Peter Doherty Biomedical Fellowship (2015-2018) and Australian Endeavour Award (2010 – 2014). He received many invitations to give a talk in the international conferences and was the recipient of 2016 Molecular and Cellular Biology of Helminth Parasites Best Poster Award in Greece and 2012 Phytochemical Society of Europe's best congress communication award in Spain.
Phurpa Wangchuk
Yangbum Gyal
Yangbum Gyal, TMD, MSOM, is a traditional Tibetan medicine doctor and licensed acupuncturist who has been practicing Tibetan medicine for over 20 years. Gyal is currently practicing Tibetan herbal medicine and acupuncture in Madison Wisconsin, at the Medicine Buddha Healing Center in Spring Green, WI and Life Force Healing Center in Evanston, IL. He received his BTMS (Bachelor in Tibetan Medical Science) from Malho Medical School in Qinghai Province (eastern Tibet), China and his Menrampa (Doctor of Tibetan Medicine) from Men-Tsee-Khang Tibetan Medical & Astrological Institute in India, and his Master Science of Oriental Medicine from the Midwest College of Oriental Medicine in Racine, WI.
Yangbum Gyal served as a resident doctor, research fellow, and professor at the Men-Tsee-Khang in India and its branch clinics in Nepal. He also served as a resident doctor at the Hargay Health Center in Qinghai Province (eastern Tibet), China. Gyal has taught Tibetan language and topics on Tibetan medicine at Indiana University-Bloomington, and is currently working in the Cultural Linguistic Services department at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. He authored the Tibetan Medical Dietary Book: Vol. I, The Potency and Preparation of Vegetables (Men-Tsee-Khang, 2004) and has published and presented various papers on Tibetan medicine and general health topics.
Cynthia Husted obtained a PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Illinois in 1990 with a focus on studies of myelin and multiple sclerosis (MS). After a postdoc at the University of San Francisco, California in neuroimaging and MS, she relocated to the University of California, Santa Barbara as Director of the Center for the Study of Neurodegenerative Disorders. Here, she focused on bioengineering research and Tibetan Medicine research with Dr. Lobsang Dhondup with whom she has continued collaborative research for almost 20 years. Dr. Husted is Board Certified in Functional Medicine, and currently works with clients in both her private practice and as Director of Research with the nonprofit Global Institute for Tibetan Medicine. Her early career was as an ICU nurse.
Cynthia first traveled to Tibet in 1987 and is drawn to Tibetan medicine due to its unique number of theories that overlap with her interest in math, precious pill medicines that utilize minerals and gems for healing, and theories of the mind and the three mental poisons of attachment, anger and ignorance that lead to all physical disease.
Cynthia Husted
Rinchen Dhondrup
Rinchen Dhondrup is an associate professor, DTM, at the Tibetan Medical College of Qinghai University. He focuses on Tibetan medical teaching, clinical research, and contemplative study. He has participated in editing national standard Tibetan medical textbooks (editor, deputy editor), and has published 30 peer-reviewed articles. Currently, Rinchen Dhondrup is the secretary-general for the Special Committee of Tibetan Medicine of World Federation Chinese Medicine Societies and is Principal Investigator for National Science Foundation Project 8146078: Correlation between biomarkers and syndrome types of Tibetan medicine in patients with chronic atrophic gastritis.
Tsering Namgyal
Tsering Namgyal is a professor at Qinghai Nationalities University. Recently, Tsering Namgyal focuses on researching the composition rules of Tibetan formulas. He published several articles about his research both in Tibetan and Chinese, such as Exploring the Application of Data Mining Technology in Researching the Composition Rules of Tibetan Medicine Prescriptions and Studying the Composition Rules of Tibetan Medicinal Formulas Used to Treat Heat Illnesses of the Liver in rGyud bZhi Based on Data Mining. He has also published a Tibetan medicine query system on Wechat (APP) which contains information on Tibetan formulas and Tibetan medicinal materials.
Stephan Kloos is a medical anthropologist working at the Austrian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Social Anthropology in Vienna. He received his PhD in 2010 from UC San Francisco and Berkeley, and has studied and written on Tibetan medicine’s history and current development for more than 15 years. Since 2014, Stephan leads the ERC Starting Grant project RATIMED on the emergence of a transnational Sowa Rigpa industry in India, China, Mongolia and Bhutan.
Stephan Kloos
Cynthia M. Beall
Cynthia M. Beall, Distinguished University Professor and S. Idell Pyle Professor of Anthropology, College of Arts and Science. She is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1997), and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences (1996), the American Philosophical Society (2001), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2013). Her research deals with human adaptation to the environment and focuses on populations native to high-altitude plateaus of the Andes, Tibet, and East Africa. Working with ethnic Tibetans in Nepal and in the Tibet Autonomous Region she and her colleagues discovered that Tibetans have a unique set of biological features arising from more than 10,000 years of residence at high altitudes.
ReZeng Caidan
ReZeng Caidan, Ph.D., serves as vice director of Tibetan Medicine Modernization Center, Medical College of Qinghai University. He is a leading expert in pharmaceutical disciplines, and was selected as a member of a development plan to train a thousand talented individuals in high-end innovation within scientific and academic fields. ReZeng Caidan is recognized as a valued teacher in higher education in Qinghai Province.
Thomas Liu
Thomas Liu, Ph.D., is a Professor of Radiology, Psychiatry, and Bioengineering at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and the Director of the UCSD Center for Functional MRI (fMRI). His research focuses on the use of fMRI and related neuroimaging methods such as EEG and MEG to study brain physiology and function.
Sienna R. Craig is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Dartmouth College. A medical and cultural anthropologist, she is the author of Healing Elements: Efficacy and the Social Ecologies of Tibetan Medicine (2012), and Horses Like Lightning: A Story of Passage through the Himalayas (2008), and co-editor of Medicine Between Science and Religion: Explorations on Tibetan Grounds (2010). Craig is also the co-editor of HIMALAYA, and the co-founder of DROKPA, which supports grassroots development efforts and social entrepreneurship in the Himalaya.
Sienna Craig
Lobsang Dhondup
Lobsang Dhondup graduated from the school of Traditional Tibetan Medicine, in Lhasa, Tibet, in 1988. He subsequently studied in Dharamsala, India, before relocating to Mongolia to work as a Professor of Tibetan and Mongolian Medicine at the Mongolia Medical University and Menpa Dratsang Institute. Dhondup relocated to the United States in 1999 and soon thereafter began collaborations with Dr. Cynthia Husted, first through the University of California, Santa Barbara, and now through their private clinics and a non-profit organization that they founded, The Global Institute for Tibetan Medicine, with a focus on preservation, education and research of Traditional Tibetan Medicine. Most recently Dhondup completed the board certification course in functional medicine with interests in integrating state-of-the-art western systems biology medicine with Tibetan treatments and research of Tibetan medicine.
Ryan Castle is a data analyst and historian who founded ISHAR, an integrative medicine research database. Ryan has cross-referenced tens of thousands of peer-reviewed articles, written detailed reviews on dozens of topics, published proposals on consciousness and complexity theory, spoken at numerous conferences, and run a non-profit academic organization for 5 years.
Ryan Castle
Katharina Sabernig
Katharina Sabernig (MD/MA) is Senior Lecturer at the Medical University of Vienna and associated with the Institute of Social Anthropology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. She is a lecturer for different fields of Tibetan Medicine, medical terminology and aspects of intercultural health issues at several academic institutions in Vienna. She was project leader of FWF subsidised projects on medical murals at Labrang Monastery and the anatomical findings of the Tibetan physician Blo-bzang-chos-grags (1638-1712?) who also was the personal physician of the Fifth Dalai Lama. Her interests focus on the visualization of medical knowledge, history, terminology and the development of medical contents particularly in Tibetan medicine.
Mingji Cuomu is a professor in Tibetan Medical College, Lhasa. She did her postdoctoral research (Wellcome Trust sponsored) at the University of Oxford and Austrian Academy of Science (ERC sponsored). She holds a PhD on Tibetan medicine and public health in the TAR (Tibet Autonomous Region) (in Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany). She holds a Bachelor and Master Degree in Tibetan medicine (in Lhasa, Tibet) as well as Master degree of Western Public Heath (in Sheffield, UK). Between 1998 and 2005 she has participated in several international medical research projects in Tibet. She has written a gynecology textbook in Tibetan for bachelor students at the Universities of five different provinces and a monograph on the same subject. She has edited and co-edited three books (Tibetan Medicine Research: From Current Evidence to Future Strategies; Studies of Medical Pluralism in Tibetan History and Society; Proceedings of the 11th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies). About twenty of her articles have been published in national (China) or international academic journals. Mingji Cuomu is also working as a doctor of Tibetan medicine with over twenty years of experience treating different chronic diseases both in Tibet and the West.
Mingji Cuomu
Vinny Minichiello
Vinny Minichiello, MD is a board-certified family physician, who is currently one of the Academic Integrative Health fellows within the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Department of Family Medicine and Community Health. During his fellowship, he is participating in the UW Health Mindfulness Program Teaching Internship to advance his studies in being a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction teacher. In addition, he is working with principal investigator Bruce Barrett, MD, PhD to assess correlations between biomarkers and the degree of dispositional mindfulness. As part of his training he has also developed an adapted mindfulness-based resilience training for first year family medicine residents. He is currently using mixed methods to evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of this training program. In addition, he will be completing the Helms Medical Institute medical acupuncture course in May 2017. Born and raised in Massachusetts he has a strong affinity for the Boston Red Sox. He is blessed to be married to Annmae Minichiello, PharmD, and they are expecting the birth of their first child this fall.
Luo Hui is a research associate at the Institute for Tibetan Medicine of China Tibetology Research Center, and a PhD Candidate at Beijing University of Chinese Medicine (BUCM). Since graduating from BUCM with a major in evidence-based Chinese medicine in 2012, he has been engaged in evidence-based Tibetan medicine research, and published over 20 papers. He is a reviewer of the European Journal of Integrative Medicine, the Chinese Journal of Integrative Medicine, and the Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine, among others.
Luo Hui
Clifford Saron
Clifford Saron is a Research Scientist at the Center for Mind and Brain and MIND Institute at the University of California at Davis. He received his Ph.D. in neuroscience from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Saron has had a long-standing interest in the effects of contemplative practice on physiology and behavior. In the early 1990s, he coordinated field research investigating Tibetan Buddhist mind training in India and the Mind and Life Institute. He has served on the Mind and Life Program and Research Council and is currently a member of the Mind and Life Steering Council and has been faculty at Mind and Life Summer Research Institutes in the US and Europe. Dr. Saron is Principal Investigator of the Shamatha Project, a multidisciplinary longitudinal investigation of the effects of long-term intensive meditation on physiological and psychological processes central to well-being, attention, emotion regulation and health. It was conceived with and taught by Alan Wallace in collaboration with a large consortium of researchers at UC Davis and elsewhere.
Dr. Saron’s other research area focuses on uni- and multisensory processing in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). These studies use electrophysiological and behavioral methods to better understand individual differences in how these children experience their everyday sensory environments.
Mona Schrempf
Mona Schrempf is a social and medical anthropologist with a PhD from Free University of Berlin (2001) and is presently affiliated with the China Centre, Kiel University. Her post-doctoral research topics concern various aspects of health, medicine, science and healing among Tibetan and Himalayan communities in China, India, and Bhutan. Between 2012 and 2015 she was a Welcome Trust Research Fellow working on transnational Tibetan medical practices between China and Europe as part of the collaborative research project ‘Beyond Tradition: Ways of Knowing and Styles of Practice in East Asian Medicines 1000 to the Present’, EASTmedicine Research Group, University of Westminster, London (monograph forthcoming). Her publications on Tibetan medicine entail Medicine between Science and Religion. Explorations of Tibetan Grounds (Berghahn 2010, co-edited with V. Adams and S. Craig), Studies of Medical Pluralism in Tibetan History and Society (IITBS 2010, co-edited with S. Craig, M. Cuomu and F. Garrett), and Soundings in Tibetan Medicine (Brill 2007, ed.).
Kunchok Dorjee
Dr. Kunchok Dorjee is a physician-epidemiologist. He is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Dr. Dorjee recently completed a PhD degree in Epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley. He has worked for several years treating and developing control strategies for various infectious diseases including tuberculosis (TB), drug-resistant TB, hepatitis B, and HIV/AIDS. His current work focusses on global control of TB using multipronged interventional strategies and innovative technology. He is presently leading a Zero TB initiative to eliminate TB in Tibetan children in India using community-based interventions comprised of TB education, screening, treatment, and preventive therapy. While practicing medicine in India, he has had the opportunity to collaborate with many traditional Tibetan medicine doctors in managing patients with various health conditions including hepatitis B. Dr. Dorjee received his medical training from the Indira Gandhi Medical College in India, and a Master of Public Health training from Stony Brook University in New York. Recently, Dr. Dorjee and Dr. Richard Chaisson were awarded the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Mentee-Mentor Fellowship Award.
Tatiana Chudakova
Tatiana Chudakova (PhD University of Chicago) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA. Her research currently explores the cultural and environmental politics of traditional medicine in Russia, with a focus on Tibetan Medicine on the border of Russia and Mongolia. Based in Buryatia, a traditionally Buddhist region on the border of Russia and Mongolia, her research has traced the uneven terrains of encounter between sowa rigpa, the state, and transnational flows of medical materialities. She is currently working on a book, provisionally titled Mixing Medicines: the Politics of Health in Asian Russia, which follows Russia's official medical sector's efforts to recuperate and regulate indigenous therapeutic traditions associated with the state's ethnic and religious minorities.
James Nettles
Dr. Nettles is a molecular pharmacologist who applies computational pharmacology methods toward drug and mechanism discovery at Emory University. His scientific works include defining molecular mechanisms of activity and acquired resistance associated with several important classes of anti-viral and anti-cancer drugs. He also uses modern biomedical methods to study mechanisms of effects for traditional medical formulations and practices.
