“This professorship will advance the scientific understanding of the relationships between the uses of psychedelic substances, the possible resulting influences on spirituality and worldview, and the subsequent effects on psychological well-being, prosocial behavior, and health.”
— Roland R. Griffiths, PhD
David B. Yaden, PhD
Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine working in The Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research.
The Johns Hopkins University Board of Trustees has officially approved David B. Yaden, Ph.D as the inaugural recipient.
David completed his Doctoral training in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania where he conducted research using psychometrics, computational linguistic analysis, virtual reality, and non-invasive brain stimulation. His research focus is on the psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and psychopharmacology of spiritual, self-transcendent, and positively transformative experiences triggered with psychedelic substances and through other means. Specifically, he is interested in understanding how these experiences can result in long-term changes to well-being and how they temporarily alter fundamental faculties of consciousness, such as the sense of time, space, and self. He is the author of over 50 academic articles, the editor of Being Called: Scientific, Secular, and Sacred Perspectives and Rituals and Practices in World Religions: Cross-Cultural Scholarship to Inform Research and Clinical Contexts. He is the author of a forthcoming book called The Varieties of Spiritual Experiences: Twenty-First Century Research and Perspectives for Oxford University Press. His scientific and scholarly work has been covered by mainstream media outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNN, BBC, and NPR.
A video of the the entire event can be accessed here.
This Professorship is intended to exist in perpetuity, so check back every decade or so to see new recipients listed here.