Joseph (Joe) Loizzo, MD, PhD, is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and Columbia-trained Buddhist scholar with over forty years’ experience studying the beneficial effects of contemplative practices on healing, learning, and development. He founded Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science, a non-profit that trains lay and professional caregivers in evidence-based methods of contemplative self-healing to empower themselves and others to reduce stress, build resilience, and cultivate lives of engagement and purpose in our interdependent world. He is Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry in Integrative Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, where he researches and teaches contemplative self-healing and optimal health. He has taught the philosophy of science and religion, the scientific study of contemplative states, and the Indo-Tibetan mind and health sciences at Columbia University, where he is Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Columbia Center for Buddhist Studies.