Three CHM Core Faculty Members Celebrate Tenure Achievement

CHM celebrated the recent tenure of three Core Faculty members (Dr. Simon Goldberg, Dr. Melissa Rosenkranz and Dr. Sarah Short), with a special gathering at UW-Madison Memorial Union Terrace! Here’s more about these three distinguished scientists and their work:
 

Simon is an Associate Professor in the Department of Counseling Psychology and Core Faculty at the Center for Healthy Minds. He leads research on psychotherapy, with a focus on mindfulness and meditation practices. He has worked on several studies of contemplative interventions (wellbeing practices) and mindfulness-based treatments.

Additionally, Simon is interested in how therapists’ traits like interpersonal skills and empathy impact patients in therapy. He has trained clinically in the Veteran Affairs (VA) hospital system and has conducted research on military veteran mental health. Simon's work has been supported with funding through the Mind & Life Institute, the American Psychological Association's Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy (Division 29), NIH, the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, and the Hope for Depression Research Foundation.

Simon is currently researching how meditation training can be delivered through mobile technology, such as the Healthy Minds Program app, to make wellbeing tools more accessible. This work has provided evidence for sustained mental health benefits from using the Healthy Minds Program (HMP) app.

Listen to Under the Cortex podcast “Dosage Dilemma: Unpacking Meditation App Science”

Melissa is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Distinguished Chair in Contemplative Neuroscience at the Center for Healthy Minds. Her research addresses how stress and emotion impact the brain and body, with a special interest in how stress impacts individuals with chronic inflammatory disease. She also studies how chronic inflammation may lead to cognitive and emotional dysfunction. Melissa has multi-disciplinary expertise at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, immunology, endocrinology, and contemplative studies, applying a wide range of methods from brain imaging to molecular biology.

She is also interested in how meditation practice affects emotions and biology related to a person’s ability to resist or be prone to disease, and examines the benefits of contemplative training, such as self-awareness, compassion, and wellbeing practices, for improved immune function. With federal funding from the National Center for Complementary and Integrated Health and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, her work has advanced our understanding of the relationship between experiences of stress and emotion and airway inflammation in asthma patients and how contemplative training may buffer this relationship. With funding from the National Institute on Aging, Melissa’s current work explores connections between chronic systemic inflammation, neuroinflammation, neurodegeneration, and long-term cognitive decline and dementia in asthma.

Listen to Mind & Life Podcast “Melissa Rosenkranz – Mind, Body, World”

Sarah is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and the Dorothy King Chair at the Center for Healthy Minds. Her multidisciplinary research combines the fields of psychology, biology, human development, and neuroscience. She is interested in the promotion of wellbeing and the prevention of brain development disorders and mental illness.

Her current research focuses on the impact of poverty on early child brain development, and her goal is to support children and families during this early formative stage of life. She has been awarded a $2.5 million grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) to study how poverty affects brain development and cognitive processes that support learning, awareness and decision-making in children. Sarah's research has also focused on community engaged projects that support the development of mindfulness practices that are tailored to the community of interest or that are appropriate for a child’s particular stage of development.

Read recent UW article Study co-authored by UW–Madison’s Short, Williams, Kral shows racism could affect infant brain development

By Isabella Toledo