Cortland Dahl is a scientist, author, translator, and meditation teacher. His eclectic background includes eight years spent living in Tibetan refugee settlements in India and Nepal and cutting-edge research at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of A Meditator’s Guide to Buddhism, as well as the Dharma Lab Substack and the forthcoming Born to Flourish, both with Dr. Richard Davidson. He is also the creator of the award-winning Healthy Minds Program, a freely available mobile app, in addition to publishing numerous scientific articles and twelve books of translations of ancient Tibetan meditation manuals.

Peter Hershock is a co-founder of the Buddhism & AI Initiative and an intercultural philosopher who reflects on contemporary issues of global concern. Past Director of the Asian Studies Development Program, he is currently Adjunct Senior Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu. He is the author of more than fifty peer-reviewed papers and eight books, including Buddhism and Intelligent Technology: Toward a More Humane Future and Consciousness Mattering: A Buddhist Synthesis.

Venerable Dr. Juewei is Associate Professor and Head of Program for Applied Buddhist Studies and Humanistic Buddhism, and Director of the Humanistic Buddhism Centre at Nan Tien Institute. An ordained monastic in the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist order since 2002, she brings over two decades of experience as a scholar-practitioner applying lived Buddhist wisdom to the challenges of our complex contemporary world. Juewei’s scholarship focuses on Humanistic Buddhism, acculturation, and responses to contemporary issues, including artificial intelligence, economics, and social crises.

Lars Sandved-Smith is a neuroscientist and meditation teacher. He is currently completing his PhD at the Monash Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies, where he is developing computational models of meditation, metacognition and self-regulation. He also works as a researcher at Softmax, an AI startup based in San Francisco building multi-agent cooperative AI. His work bridges physics, neuroscience, and contemplative practice, exploring how scientific understanding of awakening might inform both human well-being and the development of more ethical and aligned AI systems.