CAREY TURNBULL

PRESIDENT, SECRETARY

Carey Turnbull was Global Chairman of inter-dealer energy market derivative and futures broker Amerex, which he co-founded in 1983, and whose North American operations were sold in 2006 to become the energy brokerage division of NYSE listed GFI Group www.amerexenergy.com. In 2009 he founded North American Power, a retail energy supply company that under his Chairmanship grew to serve 300,000 electricity and natural gas customers in eleven states www.napower.com. In 2017 that business was purchased by NYSE listed Calpine (CPN), a Fortune 500 company. Prior to beginning his business career Mr. Turnbull lectured about and taught meditation for 10 years.

Mr. Turnbull was for 10 years a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees at Goddard College, from which he graduated in 1973. He is Chair of the advisory board of the NYU Center for Psychedelic Medicine, and has assisted in the founding of Yale University’s extensive psilocybin research program. He is a member of the Board and President of Heffter Research Institute and a member of the Board of Usona Institute, both of which promote research on psychedelic plants and drugs at leading University research departments. Since 2010 Mr. Turnbull has worked in commercial early-stage drug development for half a dozen companies variously as an investor, founder, and CEO. Most recently he founded Ceruvia Lifesciences and B.More to transform psychedelic research into cutting-edge medicine.

He provides time as an adjunct advisor to the legal defense of the Native American Church and other indigenous people’s rights to the practice of their religion, ceremonies, and beliefs free from cultural, religious and legal pressure. Mr. Turnbull also founded Freedom to Operate to protect psychedelic science and medical development for the public benefit.

Mr. and Mrs. Turnbull have been happily married for 40+ years and have 2 children, a 40-year-old son and a 39-year-old daughter. They are enthusiastic cruising sailors in the family’s classic wood sailboat. They divide their time between New York, Palm Beach, and Bar Harbor Maine.

GEORGE R. GREER, MD

BOARD CHAIR, CO-FOUNDER

Dr. Greer conducted over 100 therapeutic sessions with MDMA for 80 individuals from 1980 to 1985 with his psychiatric nurse wife, Requa Tolbert. He is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and Past President of the Psychiatric Medical Association of New Mexico. He was the Clinical Director of Mental Health Services for the New Mexico Corrections Department during the 1990s. He has been the Medical Director of the Heffter Research Institute since 1998 and is the current Board Chair.

MARK A. GEYER, PhD

CO-FOUNDER

Mark A. Geyer PhD is Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Neurosciences Emeritus at the University of California San Diego and directs the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit of the VISN 22 VA’s Mental Illness Research, Clinical, and Education Center. Since receiving his doctorate in Psychology in 1972, he has focused on basic research addressing the behavioral and neurobiological effects of psychedelics and other psychoactive drugs. For four decades, his group has had continuous funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to study the behavioral effects of hallucinogens. Dr. Geyer is internationally known for his research on the psychophysiology, neurobiology, and pharmacotherapy of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. He has published over 470 peer-reviewed papers, including many addressing the mechanisms subserving the effects of psychostimulants, hallucinogens, and entactogens. He is the lead Series Editor for Current Topics in Behavioral Neurosciences, which has completed 43+ volumes. He was involved intensively in the NIMH-funded MATRICS, TURNS, and CNTRICS Programs. He has served as a receiving Editor of Neuropsychopharmacology, Neuropharmacology, Psychopharmacology, and Schizophrenia Bulletin, and as Scientific Advisor to European Union’s Innovative Medicine Initiative. He is a Fellow of AAAS, American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP), and American Psychological Society, Past-President of the International Society for Serotonin Research and the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society, member of Scientific Council of the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, 2011 awardee of Bleuler Prize for Research in the Schizophrenias, and the 2014 Julius Axelrod Mentorship Awardee from ACNP. Dr. Geyer’s broad experience as a researcher, grant reviewer, journal editor, and teacher lends invaluable scientific and professional expertise to the Institute, as he provides the leadership to develop a strong program in the behavioral psychopharmacology and clinical applications of psychedelic agents.

ROLAND R. GRIFFITHS, PhD

BOARD MEMBER

Roland Griffiths, PhD, is Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurosciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His principal research focus in both clinical and preclinical laboratories has been on the behavioral and subjective effects of mood-altering drugs. His research has been largely supported by grants from the National Institute on Health and he is author of 380 journal articles and book chapters. He has been a consultant to the National Institutes of Health, to numerous pharmaceutical companies in the development of new psychotropic drugs, and as a member of the Expert Advisory Panel on Drug Dependence for the World Health Organization. He has conducted extensive research with sedative-hypnotics, caffeine, and novel mood-altering drugs. In 1999 he initiated a research program investigating the effects of the classic psychedelic psilocybin that includes studies in psychedelic naive and experienced volunteers, in beginning and long-term meditators, and in religious leaders. Studies have also have examined the effects of salvinorin A, dextromethorphan, and ketamine which produce altered states of consciousness having some similarities to psilocybin. Therapeutic studies with psilocybin include treatment of psychological distress in cancer patients, treatment of cigarette smoking cessation, and psilocybin treatment of major depression. Drug interaction studies and brain imaging studies (fMRI and PET) are examining pharmacological and neural mechanisms of action. The Hopkins laboratory has also conducted a series of internet survey studies characterizing various psychedelic experiences including those associated with acute and enduring adverse effects, mystical-type effects, entity and God-encounter experiences, and alleged positive changes in mental health, including decreases in depression and anxiety, decreases in substance abuse, and reductions in death anxiety. (Participation by Board Member does not constitute or imply endorsement by the Johns Hopkins University or the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System.)

CHARLES S. GROB, MD

CO-FOUNDER

Dr. Grob is currently Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine and the Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. He has a long-standing interest in the history of psychiatric research with hallucinogens, and has published in the psychiatric literature and has given talks at professional meetings in this area. Dr. Grob received the first FDA approval to carry out human research with 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). He collaborated with Drs. Dennis McKenna and Jace Callaway on a project to study the biochemical, physiological, and psychological parameters of long-term ayahuasca use in Brazil. In collaboration with Dr. Marlene Dobkin de Rios, he has examined the sociocultural context within which the use of these compounds occurs. In 2004 Dr. Grob initiated an FDA approved research investigation examining the effects of psilocybin in advanced-stage cancer patients with severe anxiety, which was completed in 2008. He is also the editor of Hallucinogens: A Reader, and the co-editor with Dr. Roger Walsh of Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics.

WILLIAM A. LINTON

TREASURER

Bill Linton received a BS in Biological Sciences from University of California-Berkeley and did post-graduate work in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Pharmaceutical Chemistry program. In 2004, Bill received an honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree from Hannam University (Taejon, Korea) in recognition of his global support for the advancement of technology and support of education in the Life Sciences.

Bill founded Promega Corporation in 1978 and has served continuously as Chairman, President and CEO. A life science research company, Promega has grown to 1,200 employees worldwide with direct offices in 15 countries and an additional 55 distributors. Initially supporting university researchers, Promega now serves scientists in basic research, drug discovery, forensics and clinical diagnostics.

As an employer, Promega is recognized for creating an “employee as individual” workplace, acknowledging and supporting work-life balance and nurturing personal and professional creativity and innovation.

Creativity and discovery are also platforms for integration with community. In 1991, Promega established Woods Hollow Children’s Center (WHCC), providing infant through school-age childcare for the local community as well as Promega employees. In 1993, the BioPharmaceutical Technology Center Institute (BTCI), a non-profit education, science and cultural institute, was established. BTCI offers programs and learning access to students of all ages. It is also known for its annual Bioethics Forum. Bill had a guiding hand in the most recent Forums which explored the understanding of human consciousness from multiple angles of science, including physics, neuroscience and ethnobotany.

DENNIS J. MCKENNA, PhD

CO-FOUNDER

Dennis McKenna’s professional and personal interests are focused on the interdisciplinary study of ethnopharmacology and natural hallucinogens. He received his doctorate in 1984 from the University of British Columbia, where his research focused on ethnopharmacological investigations of ayahuasca and oo-koo-he, two indigenous Amazonian psychedelic medicines. He completed post-doctoral studies at the Helicon Foundation in San Diego (1984-86), the Laboratory of Clinical Pharmacology at NIMH (1986-88) and the Department of Neurology at Stanford University (1988-1990). He worked at Shaman Pharmaceuticals as Director of Ethnopharmacology from 1990-93, and relocated to Minnesota in 1993 to join the Aveda Corporation as Senior Research Pharmacognosist.

Dr. McKenna taught courses in Ethnopharmacology, Botanical Medicines and Plants in Human Affairs in the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota from 2001 to 2017. He is a founding board member of the Heffter Research Institute and serves on the advisory board of non-profit organizations in the fields of ethnobotany and botanical medicines. He was a key organizer and participant in the Hoasca Project, an international biomedical study of ayahuasca used as a sacrament by the UDV, a syncretic religious group in Brazil. He is the younger brother of Terence McKenna. From 2004 to 2008, he was the Principal Investigator on a project funded by the Stanley Medical Research Institute to investigate Amazonian ethnomedicines for the treatment of schizophrenia and cognitive deficits. In 2017, with the collaboration of many colleagues, he organized and presented a landmark symposium, the Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs: 50 years of Research. The conference commemorated the 50th anniversary of the original conference held in San Francisco in 1967. Synergetic Press published a limited edition of the Proceedings of both the 1967 and 2017 symposia as a double volume set in 2018.

In the spring of 2019, in collaboration with colleagues in Canada and the U.S., he incorporated a new non-profit, The McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy. He emigrated to Canada in the spring of 2019 together with his wife Sheila, and now resides in Abbotsford, B.C.

DAVID E. NICHOLS, PhD

FORMER BOARD CHAIR, CO-FOUNDER, VICE-PRESIDENT

Dr. Nichols, PhD originally conceived of a privately funded Institute as the most effective mechanism for bringing research on psychedelic agents into the modern era of neuroscience. This vision led to the founding of the Heffter Research Institute in 1993. Prior to his retirement in June 2012, he was the Robert C. and Charlotte P. Anderson Distinguished Chair in Pharmacology at the Purdue University College of Pharmacy, and also was adjunct Professor of Pharmacology at the Indiana University School of Medicine. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC, where he continues his research. In 2004 he was named the Irwin H. Page Lecturer, and in 2006 was named the first Provost’s s Outstanding Graduate Mentor at Purdue. The focus of his graduate training, beginning in 1969, and of much of his research subsequent to receiving his doctorate in 1973 has been the investigation of the relationship between molecular structure and the action of psychedelic agents and other substances that modify behavioral states. His research has been continuously funded by government agencies for more three decades. He consults for the pharmaceutical industry and has served on numerous committees and government research review groups. Widely published in the scientific literature and internationally recognized for his research on centrally active drugs, he has studied all of the major classes of psychedelic agents, including LSD and other lysergic acid derivatives, psilocybin and the tryptamines, and phenethylamines related to mescaline. Among scientists, he is recognized as one of the foremost experts on the medicinal chemistry of hallucinogens. His high standards and more than four decades of research experience set the tone to ensure that rigorous methods and quality science are pursued by the Institute.

JANIS PHELPS, PhD

BOARD MEMBER

Janis Phelps, PhD, is a full professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), San Francisco, CA. A licensed clinical psychologist, she has held faculty positions there in the East-West Psychology graduate program (founded by Alan Watts) and in the clinical psychology doctoral program. She served as the Dean of Faculty at CIIS for the graduate departments in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. She is currently the founder and director of the CIIS Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research. As the Center’s founder, Dr. Phelps developed and launched the first academically accredited, professional certificate training program for legal psychedelic-assisted therapy and research www.ciis.edu/psychedeliccenter. Her recent publications focus on the competencies, knowledge base, and training of therapists and facilitators in psychedelic-assisted therapies. Dr. Phelps is contributing to the development of a national accreditation board for facilitators/therapists and to methods of scaling effective and efficient training programs to meet the burgeoning need for well-trained mental health and medical professionals in the field of psychedelic medicine.

T. CODY SWIFT, MA

BOARD MEMBER

T. Cody Swift, MA received his masters degree in existential-phenomenological counseling from Seattle University and is currently perusing licensure in California. He has worked as a guide at Johns Hopkins University in the psilocybin cancer-anxiety study, and is currently conducting qualitative research into the nature of healing with psychedelics in a clinical setting, with MDMA and psilocybin. Cody is also a current director of the Riverstyx Foundation which is dedicated to advancing reforms in the end-of-life care, addiction recovery, and criminal justice fields. Since 2008, he has extensively supported research into psychedelic medicines as a promising psychological treatment that allows for a deeper exploration of oneself and one’s condition, leading to sustained healing and growth.

CLAUDIA TURNBULL

SECRETARY

Claudia Turnbull has a Master of Arts Degree in Consciousness Studies from Goddard College. She began teaching the Transcendental Meditation Technique in 1974, and now works at the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research investigating the results of psilocybin experiences had by religious professionals and long term meditators. Claudia has been a major philanthropic supporter of psychedelic research at major universities for over ten years. She has studied therapist training with the Usona Institute for the treatment of Major Depressive Disorder with psilocybin, and studied the therapeutic treatment of PTSD with MDMA with MAPS. She is a founder of B.More, a nonprofit whose mission is to make a prescription medicine of psilocybin for the treatment of substance use disorders, and a founding member of Ceruvia, a corporation whose mission is research and development of neurotransformational medicines. She is a Board member of the Heffter Research Institute. She is a member of College of the Atlantic Board of Trustees. She has been happily married for 42 years and has raised 2 children, a 41-year-old son and a 38-year-old daughter with one grandson. She divides her time between Tuxedo Park New York and Bar Harbor Maine. She is an avid organic gardener, and a capable and enthusiastic cruising sailor in the family’s classic wood sailboats.

FRANZ X. VOLLENWEIDER, MD

DIRECTOR

Dr. Franz X. Vollenweider is currently the Vice-Director of Research and Teaching and Director of the “Neuropsychopharmacology and Brain Imaging” Research Unit of the University Hospital of Psychiatry Zürich East, and Professor of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine, University of Zürich. He is also the Director of Heffter Research Centre Zürich for Consciousness Studies (HRC-ZH), which he founded in 1998 and incorporated in his research group.

Dr. Vollenweider received his MD degree at the University of Zürich. He completed his doctoral thesis in experimental medicine at the Institute of Toxicology of the University and ETH of Zürich, was trained in neurochemistry at the Brain Research Institute of the University of Zürich, and in neuroimaging at the PET Centre of the PSI-ETH. In 1994 he became certified in the specialities of psychiatry and psychotherapy. His research interests encompass the area of psychopathology, cognitive neuroscience, and behavioural psychopharmacology of psychotic and affective disorders.

Current research focuses on the investigation of the functional networks and transmitter dynamics underlying the experience of self, visual perception, cognitive and emotional processes and the dysfunctions of these processes in human models of psychoses and psychiatric patients. Multiple approaches including measures of information processing, event-related potentials, and brain imaging techniques are used for studying these functions.

Dr. Vollenweider has published over 80 peer-reviewed papers, many of which address the mechanisms of action of psychostimulants, hallucinogens, and entactogens in humans. His research is supported by multiple grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Swiss Federal Health Office, and the Heffter Research Institute (USA), and by multiple AWARDS from the NARSAD and the Fetzer Research Institute USA. He has received the Achievement Award of the Swiss Society of Psychiatry (1990), the Heffter Research Institute Award (1997), the Götz Prize of the University of Zürich (2000), and the British Association of Psychopharmacology Prize (2002).

STEVEN GRANT, PhD

DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH

Steven Grant, Ph.D., joined the Heffter Research Institute in 2021 after nearly 5 decades of conducting basic and clinical research on the action of drugs on the brain. His interest in the intersection of neuroscience and pharmacology started as an undergraduate when he read an article describing how psychedelic drugs act on brain serotonin receptors. His early career focused on pre-clinical research on brain aminergic and cholinergic neurotransmitter systems. He received a Ph.D. in 1979 from the University of Georgia in BioPsychology. His post-doctoral fellowship at the Psychiatry Department of Yale School of Medicine focused on neurophysiological and behavioral studies of the brain noradrenergic system. After completion of his fellowship, he received a research faculty appointment in the Department. Subsequently, he joined the Psychology Department at the University of Delaware as an assistant professor. While at Delaware he established an interdisciplinary undergraduate program in neuroscience. During this time he became interested in the newly emerging area of brain imaging and cognitive neuroscience. As a staff scientist at the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, he conducted studies on drug craving and decision-making in humans that combined brain pharmacology and cognitive neuroscience using brain imaging. He then joined the NIDA extramural staff as a Program Officer where he developed a nationwide funding program on the cognitive neuroscience of substance abuse and became chief of the Clinical Neuroscience Branch. After 25 years at NIDA, he retired and joined the Heffter Research Institute to pursue his original interest in psychedelic drug research.

KATRIN PRELLER, PhD

CHIEF SCIENTIST

Katrin Preller received her M.Sc. (Neuropsychology and Clinical Psychology) from University of Konstanz, Germany. For her PhD, Dr. Preller joined the Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, University of Zurich, Switzerland, where she investigated the neurobiological and social-cognitive long-term effects of cocaine, MDMA, and heroin use. After completing her PhD, she joined the Neuropsychopharmacology and Brain Imaging lab at the Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich, investigating the effects of psychedelic substances on self-perception, social cognition, and multimodal processing using different brain imaging techniques. Dr. Preller received an SNSF PostDoc mobility fellowship and worked as a Postdoc at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, UCL, London, UK, and Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA. Subsequently, she was appointed as Junior Group Leader at the Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, University of Zurich, and holds a position as Visiting Assistant Professor at Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Preller is a recipient of the Pfizer Research Award and the Swiss Society for Biological Psychiatry Young investigators award. Her group’s research focus is centered on the neurobiology and pharmacology of cognitive and emotional processes in health and disease using multi-modal behavioral, electrophysiological and neuroimaging techniques, the development of novel treatment approaches, and the interaction between pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments. She is studying the potential of psychedelic substances as treatment for psychiatric illnesses in clinical trials and aims at uncovering the clinical mechanism of action to inform psychedelic-assisted therapy. Dr. Preller supports various mentoring and training programs for young researchers and therapists. She holds a position as Biomarker and Experimental Medicine Leader at F.Hoffmann-La Roche.