Breaking Convention 2023 Travel Grant Recipients

Chloé Pronovost-Morgan

Chloé completed her undergraduate studies at McGill University in Canada, and is currently in the second year of her master's in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. For the second year of her master's she was encouraged to do a research internship, which she is now completing at the Centre for Psychedelic Research, at Imperial College London. Over the next 6 months, she will be helping run a self-blinded naturalistic placebo-controlled trial on microdosing, in people with anxiety and depression - under the supervision of Dr. Brandon Weiss and Dr. David Erritzoe.

Daria Evans

Daria is currently undertaking a Professional Doctorate in Counselling Psychology at University of Roehampton. Her training is based on the scientist-practitioner model, which means that she is both involved in clinical practice and research. As part of a clinical component of her training, she sees patients who experience psychological distress for weekly therapy sessions within the NHS and private sector. Daria works across a wide variety of disorders and mental health struggles, including depression, anxiety, eating disorders, ASD, ADHD, loss and bereavement, identity disorders, schizophrenia and personality disorders. She also holds a position of Honorary Research Associate at Imperial College London (The Centre for Psychedelic Research), working on the first in the world double-blind placebo-controlled randomised clinical trial of DMT-assisted psychotherapy as a treatment for Major Depressive Disorder.

Haley Maria Dourron

Haley is a PhD student in the Drug Use and Behavior Lab at the University of Alabama at Birmingham under the supervision of Dr. Peter Hendricks. Her work focuses on understanding how classic psychedelics can induce lasting changes in people’s lives from a neurophenomenological behavioral perspective and how they compare to other extreme experiences, particularly psychosis. Currently, she is conducting an interview-based study of how people with a history of psychosis respond to classic psychedelics, also funded by the Source Research Foundation. Haley is also developing a real-time fMRI neurofeedback study to understand more about how flexibility within key large-scale brain networks might change after psilocybin-assisted therapy for women with fibromyalgia.

Himesh Mehta

Himesh is a BAME first-year PhD student in the History department at the University of Warwick. His research, currently titled “The Making of a ‘Psychedelic Renaissance’ in Britain”, explores the pre-history of the ongoing ‘psychedelic renaissance’ in Britain. In particular, it explores how the movement reflects late twentieth and early twenty-first century cultural and epistemic paradigms such as neoliberalism and the dominance of neuroscientific knowledge. Himesh’s research explores how the movement is a part of the cultural encouragement and advancement of a particular form of ‘self’ or ‘human nature’ highly influenced by these paradigms.

Jennifer Frias

Jennifer is a full-time student in the Research Master on Drug Development and Neurohealth in Maastricht, The Netherlands. As part of her internship during the second year of the master's program, she is working as a research intern in the Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy for Anorexia Nervosa trial, at the Centre for Psychedelic Research in the Imperial College London. Because of her background in Psychology, she is mostly interested in psychiatric diseases, including anxiety, depression, PTSD, addiction and schizophrenia.

Aurora Katy-Bush Gordon

Aurora is a masters student studying Counseling and Psychotherapy at the University of Salford. She is focusing her research on psychedelic assisted therapy and hoping to connect with other students and academics to support her work. This emerging field pulls on her postgraduate life sciences background and blends with her values and passions around healing and trauma work. Aurora is determined to move into this field and utilize all her past experiences to help bring PAT into being by doing effective rigorous research that can pave the way for psychedelic assisted therapy being available to more people, to those who have experienced trauma and need it most.

Maïa Nappee

Maïa is a Master's student in Neuropsychology at Maastricht University in The Netherlands. She obtained her BSc in Psychology at Royal Holloway University. Currently, she is assisting Leor Roseman with his research on the psychosocial effect of ayahuasca on peace-building between Israelis and Palestinians, at Imperial College’s Centre of Psychedelic research. Maïa is interested in understanding how altered states of consciousness affect beliefs and perceptions of reality. The effects of psychoactive substances on neurotransmitter functioning and the psychology of self have always sparked her fascination. Moreover, she is drawn to the therapeutic potential of psychedelic psychoplastogens on addictive behaviours, and the ritualistic use of entheogenic plants.

Mar Estarellas

As a soon-to-be PhD graduate in Intelligent, Integrated Imaging in Healthcare from University College London, Mar is eager to bring her expertise and passion to the forefront of the cutting-edge field of psychedelic science. Her research has focused on the intersection of neuroscience, medical imaging, and artificial intelligence, specifically in the context of understanding disease progression models of Alzheimer's disease. She is also involved in a research project using sparse machine learning models to evaluate subjective effects of LSD from functional connectivity data. However, her passion for the transformative potential of psychedelics goes beyond the laboratory, and she is deeply committed to exploring their therapeutic benefits for mental and ecological health.

Camila Suarez Valencia

Camila is currently a PhD student in Cultural Studies at the University of Surrey, where she received a studentship in Medical Humanities to develop a doctoral research project on the contemporary landscape of psychedelic medicine in Latin America. In her research, she explores the hybrid assemblage of narratives and practices bridging western scientific and traditional indigenous medical systems in the context of contemporary psychedelic medicine, as well as the role Latinx and Indigenous voices play in the so-called psychedelic renaissance. I suggest that an in-depth look at this context can further nurture the development of a fairer, more inclusive and more comprehensive global psychedelic medicine.

Nathalia Rustom

Nathalia will attend Breaking Convention to represent the Arab Psychedelic Society amongst the international psychedelic community. Nathalia is a licensed psychologist and a researcher currently working on studies addressing various topics in psychedelic science. Nathalia’s aim is to make psychedelic therapy and research more inclusive, by exploring its effects across cultures, notably in eastern cultures, and the SWANA region. In addition, Nathalia would also like to begin looking into the effects of psychedelic therapy in clinical populations that have long been excluded from such studies (e.g. Borderline Personality Disorder, Fibromyalgia, Complex Grief Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD and OCPD), and Bipolar Spectrum Disorder, etc.) In terms of inclusivity, it is also very important for Nathalia to create a space for Queer and gender-diverse individuals. Nathalia is also interested in exploring the anthropological and historical role of psychedelics and altered-states of consciousness in society. 

Neşe Devenot

Nese has been serving a contingent (limited-term) postdoc since she received her PhD. At the University of Cincinnati, where she manages an interdisciplinary research center, her grant writing prioritizes support for underrepresented minorities among their Graduate Student Fellows, affiliate faculty, and event speakers. This focus helps to ensure a broad representation of perspectives, which is essential to the center’s mission in advancing societal justice and reducing the systemic biases that are borne from unequal representation in research and education. In Fall 2022, she was appointed to serve as the Institute’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Lead, where she will build on her contributions to the recruitment committee last year.

Orla Mallon

Orla is a part of the team at Imperial College's Centre for Psychedelic Research, where she has been serving as an intern since August 2022. This internship is part of her extended Master's in Cognitive Science at Aarhus University, Denmark, where she is an international student. Orla’s interest in psychedelic therapy was first sparked a few years ago as she encountered the growing body of research indicating its potential in treating treatment-resistant depression. Her fascination with the subject only grew as she delved deeper into the literature and eventually led her to my current role at the Centre, where she has been a core part of the design, set-up, and recruitment of their upcoming microdosing trial, which is set to begin in the coming weeks.

Rosalind McAlpine

Rosalind completed her BA in Experimental Psychology at Oxford University, where she specialized in neuroscience, social psychology, and developmental questions in science and religion. She then completed her MRes in Developmental Neuroscience and Psychopathology at University College London, followed by a year working as a Post-Graduate Research Fellow at Yale University. She is currently conducting psychedelic research with the Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit (CPU) and working on The Understanding Neuroplasticity Induced by Tryptamines (UNITy) Project. She also works with a number of collaborating retreat centers in Europe and South America to investigate the use of plant medicines in more naturalistic, traditional, ceremonial settings.

Uma Chatterjee

Uma is currently getting her Masters in Applied Cognition & Neuroscience at the The University of Texas at Dallas. In her neuroscience research career, she strives to further elucidate the cellular-level and systems-level mechanisms that underlie obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and their functionally-dynamic presentation as comorbid psychiatric illnesses. She also hopes to understand the neuropharmacological mechanisms of psychedelics as they relate to OCD, PTSD, and other disorders that cause unnecessary human suffering.

Zoë Dubus

Zoë has been working for about ten years on the medical history of psychedelics in France, and has published several articles or book chapters on the subject. She just defended her PhD thesis in 2022 on the medical use of LSD during the years 1951-1966. Her work highlights the influences of gender and social class in the care of patients at that time, and questions in particular the use of therapeutic touch and the notion of consent. Zoë is currently in the process of applying for a post-doc with Canadian historian Erika Dyck, with the aim of studying the innovative proposals of three pioneering women therapists who helped create the principles of "set and setting" in the 1950s. These women have now become invisibilized and I plan to replace them in the history of psychedelic assisted therapy.

Adam Amrani

Adam is a clinical psychology graduate student at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. Adam and a colleague started the Swiss psychedelic student movement 3 years ago by creating the first official student society of its kind in the country (PALA). He also co-founded the Swiss conference for psychedelic science (ALPS). Adam is currently writing his masters thesis on the topic of psychedelic-assisted treatments for substance use disorders, and is halfway through a 3 year long psychedelic therapy training provided by Dr. Peter Oehen in Switzerland. Adam intends to become a competent psychotherapist and psychedelic therapist and also wishes to create a retreat center dedicated to healing and community building, and set it as an example of openness, inclusivity, interdisciplinary action and ethical integrity.

Aravind Santhose Kumar

Aravind has been involved in psychedelic science, drug policy and harm reduction activism for the past 5 years. They are currently getting their Masters in Cognitive Neuroscience at Freie Universität Berlin and is writing their graduate thesis on a glutamatergic model of psychedelic action: integrating NMDAR antagonists to the REBUS model. Their key goal is to make psychedelic harm reduction services more accessible to neurodivergent and marginalized populations especially outside North America.

Caspar Montgomery

Caspar is currently studying Mind & Brain (MSc) at Humboldt University, Berlin. There, he also coordinates a journal club run by the MIND Foundation and actively encourages people of all backgrounds to participate and discuss ethical issues in psychedelia. During his undergraduate studies, he founded a Psychedelic Society at the University of York. Caspar also volunteers for PsyCare UK, and for Heroic Hearts UK. Caspar is currently working both on theoretical investigations of psychedelics, specifically looking at what some of the dominant theories surrounding the therapies might be missing, and conducting empirical research into how states induced by flicker light compare to those induced by psychedelics, drawing lessons for therapy which will benefit all who undergo the process.

Cathelen Trejos Valverde

Cathelen is a licensed psychologist and social worker. She is currently supporting psychotherapists from an indigenous group in Mexico, sharing and providing technical guidance on their work with plant medicine to treat substance misuse or problematic use. She has been supporting people who have experienced tragic violent events. In addition, she has personally engaged in various healing methods throughout the years, which has led her to realize that we need to take the leap to “innovate”, by bringing back ancestral/indigenous knowledge to support coexisting with nature and engaging with ease the current global challenges.

Catherine Andreau

Catherine received her BSc in Molecular Biotechnology from the University of Chile as well as her MSc and PhD in Neuroscience from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She did her PhD thesis in the psychophysiology laboratory under the direction of Diego Cosmelli and Ingmar Franken, where she investigated the effects of meditation practice on cognitive control using electrophysiological measures. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the MIDAP Millennium Institute in Chile, and received the Francisco Varela Award from Mind and Life Europe. Catherine currently works as a María Zambrano postdoctoral researcher at the University of Valencia, Spain. Her current research focuses on the effects of mindfulness-based interventions and compassion-based interventions on psychobiological measures and how the use of virtual reality can induce a non-drug altered state of consciousness which can be useful for research in psychology.

Daniel Belalcazar Serna

Before delving into the drug-policy world, Daniel earned his B.A. in Political Science at the University of California, San Diego, and worked as a high school teacher for three years. Daniel is now a junior researcher working towards his M.A. in Global Studies at Humboldt University in Berlin. He is an aspiring policy analyst with expertise in global drug policy issues, focusing on intersectional areas such as alternative development, drug-related environmental degradation, democratic governance, indigenous epistemes, public health, and harm reduction schemes. For the past four years, he has been researching, taking courses, getting hands-on experience and writing about many of these same issues.

Gerardo Gonzalo

Gerardo is a pharmacist from Universidad Complutense de Madrid with an M.Sc. in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience from Maastricht University. His academic career has focused on Ayahuasca, about which he has conducted preclinical and clinical research, specifically focusing on the potential of this mixture in combination with meditation practices to improve social cognition.  Currently, he is a research assistant on the project "Spiritual states induced by Ayahuasca" project at Coimbra University. Gerardo hopes to keep growing in the scientific, drug harm reduction, and drug policies realm and keep working towards increasing the accessibility of psychedelics, specifically Ayahuasca, for therapeutic and religious purposes.