Tehseen Noorani, PhD, (Social Scientist and facilitator of Reimagining Psychedelic Trials working group) is interested in the co-evolving epistemic, therapeutic & economic nature of extreme experiences. He is an interdisciplinary social scientist, currently holding research positions in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the Anthropology Department at Durham University in the UK. Over the past decade, Noorani has been tracing the renewed scientific and therapeutic interest in psychedelic experiences, exploring implications for theories of psychopathology and approaches to mental healthcare. Weaving together scientific, spiritual, and aesthetic registers, this research is situated in the context of medicalisation in the global North and the ongoing ‘war on drugs’. He also focusses on methodological issues that arise in the study of psychedelics, particularly through convening the ‘Reimagining Psychedelic Trials’ interdisciplinary working group. Noorani is a part-time scholar-in-residence at Tactogen Public Benefit Corporation and an Ambassador for Fireside Project. 

In addition to an active neuroanaesthesia practice, Dr. Boris Heifets, PhD, directs both clinical and basic neuroscience research programs, bridging neuroscience, psychiatry and anesthesiology. His research is focused on deconstructing the neural mechanisms involved in an emerging class of rapid-acting psychiatric therapies, like ketamine, MDMA and psilocybin. His lab investigates these compounds’ neuroplastic potential, and is working to develop therapeutics that are precise, safe, and scalable. He is an assistant professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative & Pain Medicine, and, by courtesy, in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford School of Medicine. He received his undergraduate degree in neuroscience from Yale University, M.D./Ph.D. degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and completed anaesthesiology residency and a neuroanaesthesiology fellowship at Stanford Hospital.

Dr. Katherine Hendy, PhD, is a medical anthropologist and science studies scholar who uses ethnographic methods to investigate how biomedical knowledge produced in different settings–clinics, laboratories, and trials–is taken up by different groups of actors. Dr. Hendy has a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in sociocultural anthropology and a M.A. from the University of Chicago in the social sciences. Her doctoral research ethnographically followed the development of the drug MDMA—better known as the recreational drug “ecstasy”—as a treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder. Her research argues that the “outsider” status of MDMA-assisted therapy makes it a critical site for examining how claims about pharmaceutical safety and efficacy are produced and move between different experimental settings.