Endowed Professors

Fadel Zeidan is a Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology in the Center of Pain Medicine and is Director of the Pain Health and Mindfulness Laboratory.  He is also the inaugural Endowed Professor of UCSD’s T. Denny Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion. He is also a Co-Founder and Director of Neuroscience at the UC San Diego Center for Psychedelic Research. Fadel’s research is also focused on how psychedelics, cannabis and meditation can alleviate suffering and promote a kinder world. His research is focused on identifying the neurobiological mechanisms supporting the modulation and cultivation of empathy and compassion.

His research is currently funded by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health to conduct placebo controlled clinical trials to assess if and how mindfulness affects chronic pain. His research program has expanded to investigate the effect and mechanisms involved in the modulation of pain and health by natural products like psilocybin, DMT and cannabis. His team just discovered for the first time that psilocybin can produce dramatic improvements in chronic pain, trauma, depression and well-being.

He is an active mentor of more than 20 undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral trainees. His work has also been featured in traditional media outreach (CNN; NPR; Time Magazine, CBS and others), Tedx and personally presented his work to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama in Mongolia. Fadel was also awarded the 2014 National Institutes of Health Mitchell Max Award for Research Excellence.

Dr. Monique Smith is a Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion Professor and an Assistant Professor at the University of California San Diego in the Departments of Neurobiology and Neurosciences.

She is a first-generation college student and received both her B.A. and M.A in Psychology from California State University San Marcos, under the mentorship of Dr. Keith Trujillo. She worked with Drs. Chris Evans and Amynah Pradhan at UCLA, where she developed her passion for understanding chronic pain.

Dr. Smith received her Ph.D. in Behavioral Neuroscience from Oregon Health & Science University working with Drs. Ryabinin and Heinricher. It was during her graduate studies that she serendipitously discovered the social transfer of pain, and embarked upon a journey to study the neural mechanisms of empathy. Finally, she conducted her postdoctoral training at Stanford University with Dr. Robert Malenka, where she used cutting-edge neurotechnologies to investigate the social transfer of pain and analgesia.

Dr. Eric Garland is the developer of an innovative, evidence-based therapy for addiction, emotion dysregulation, and chronic pain founded on insights derived from cognitive and affective neuroscience, called Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE). He has published more than 250 scientific manuscripts and received more than $80 million in research grants to conduct clinical trials and neuroscientific investigations to examine the efficacy and mechanisms of mindfulness as a treatment for addiction and chronic pain.

Dr. Garland has focused much of his research efforts on generating novel solutions to the opioid epidemic - a severe public health threat which has exacted a tremendous toll on society. More recently, Dr. Garland has begun to work on optimizing MORE with other neuroscience-informed therapeutics like neurofeedback and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. In recognition of his expertise, Dr. Garland was appointed by former NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins to the NIH HEAL Multi-Disciplinary Working Group to help guide the $2+ billion HEAL initiative to use science to halt the opioid crisis.

In a bibliometric analysis of mindfulness research published over the past 55 years, Dr. Garland was found to be the most prolific author of mindfulness research in the world.