Certificate in
Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies (CPAT)

Dr Gita Vaid (USA)

MD

Dr Gita Vaid MD is CPAT’s International Course Director.

Dr Gita Vaid is a Board Certified Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst practicing in New York City. Dr Vaid completed her residency training at NYU Medical Center and her psychoanalytic training at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Education affiliated with NYU. Her early biological and research background includes a completed fellowship in clinical psychopharmacology and neurophysiology at New York Medical College and a research fellowship at NYU Medical Center.

Dr Vaid is currently on faculty and teaches at both IPE and the NYU department of Psychiatry. She has a special interest in teaching interview technique, psychoanalytic theory and British object relations.

Dr Vaid’s current focus and expertise are in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. She is a MAPS trained psychedelic therapist and was part of the NY site Phase 3 MDMA psychotherapy study for PTSD.

Dr Vaid is a leader in ketamine assisted psychotherapy which she practices and teaches in New York City.  She serves as a lead instructor at The Ketamine Training Center with psychedelic psychotherapy pioneer, Dr. Phil Wolfson. She is a co-founder of the Center for Natural Intelligence, a multidisciplinary laboratory dedicated to psychedelic psychotherapy innovation and research. She serves as the Director of Psychedelic Awareness and Consciousness research at The Chopra Foundation and with Dr. Deepak Chopra is currently developing protocols integrating meditation with ketamine assisted psychotherapy.

Current publications include:

Vaid G, Walker B. “Psychedelic Psychotherapy: Building Wholeness Through Connection”. Glob Adv Health Med. 2022 Feb 23;11

Gita Vaid, MD, “Psychoanalysis and Psychedelic Psychotherapy : A New Modern Synthesis?” The Wounds of Our Mother Psychoanalysis – New Models for a Psychoanalysis in Crisis.

Dr Eli Kotler (AUS)

MBBS MPM FRANZCP Cert. Old Age Psych. AFRACMA

Dr Eli Kotler is CPAT’s Australian Course Director.

Dr Eli Kotler is a Consultant Psychiatrist and Psychodynamic Psychotherapist. He is the Medical Director of Malvern Private Hospital, an addiction and trauma hospital in Melbourne. Eli completed the inaugural Mind Medicine Australia Certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies (CPAT) course, and has since been on its Faculty.

As a psychiatric trainee, Eli was awarded the Royal College of Psychiatrists Trainee Prize for his Scholarly Project on Depression, as well as a Research Committee Trainee award for his work on Philosophy of Mind. As an adjunct lecturer at Monash University, he oversees medical students on their addiction medicine rotation. He has been invited as a keynote speaker to several conferences and meetings to discuss addictions, trauma and psychedelics. Eli sits on the Committee of the ANZMHA to help organise their yearly addiction conference. He also sits on the inaugural Clinical Advisory Group for the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation. Eli is an Associate Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Medical Administrators, and is a member of the Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs. He also has extensive research experience with novel therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases.

Due to his interest in trauma, Eli has been appointed an Independent Medical Examiner by WorkSafe Victoria. He has been appointed by the Minister for Workplace Safety to sit on the Victorian Medical Panels, and is an expert witness in historical abuse cases.

Clinically, Eli works in a psychodynamic framework, and attempts to help his patients find freedom from their addictions and trauma through relational experiences, and experiential self-awareness. He is part of the AFL Player’s Association referral network for addiction issues, and his interests in depth-psychology and neuroscience led him to found the Melbourne Neuropsychoanalytic Group.  Eli is a Board Director of Mind Medicine Australia.

Dr Ben Sessa (UK)

MBBS, B.SC, MRC PSYCH

Dr Ben Sessa is one of CPAT’s Residential Facilitators.

For over 15 years Dr Ben Sessa has been at the forefront of psychedelic and cannabis research and clinical medicine in the UK through his affiliations with Imperial College London. Ben qualified as a medical doctor from UCL in 1997 and went on to specialise in psychiatry. For 25 years he has worked as a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist with young people and adult patients in the field of addictions and trauma-related psychiatry.

Ben started studying psychedelics as a junior doctor and has taken part in research projects at Bristol University, Cardiff University and Imperial College London with LSD, psilocybin, DMT, ketamine and MDMA – receiving and/or administering all of these compounds in legal research settings.

One of the first doctors to develop the field of contemporary psychedelic research in the UK, he was the former co-founder, former CEO, and subsequently the former Head of Psychedelic Medicine at Awakn Life Sciences, a Bio-Tech company carrying out psychedelic research into addictions. Awakn opened four clinical centres in the U.K. and Europe, providing psychedelic psychotherapy with ketamine, for a wide range of psychiatric indications, as well as an extensive R&D psychedelic research program.

Ben was one of the first Medical Cannabis psychiatric prescribers in the UK.

Ben is a trained MDMA, ketamine and psilocybin therapist. He has led research into MDMA-assisted therapy for Alcohol Use Disorder and is published widely in the academic and medical press.

Ben is the co-founder and past president of the Breaking Convention conference. He is the author of The Psychedelic Renaissance (2012/2017), the novel ‘To Fathom Hell or Soar Angelic’ (2015) and Altered States (2021). Ben lives and works in Bristol, UK.

Website: www.drsessa.com

Dr Lauren Macdonald (UK)

BMBS, BSc, PGCert

Dr Lauren Macdonald is one of CPAT’s Residential Facilitators.

Lauren is a psychiatry doctor and therapy guide at the Centre for Psychedelic Research, Imperial College London. She currently works on trials studying psilocybin-assisted therapy for anorexia nervosa and fibromyalgia, and DMT for treatment-resistant depression. Alongside her clinical work she is a retreat facilitator and co-founder at Essence Medicine, an organisation providing psycho-spiritual care to people facing life threatening illness. She has degrees in Medicine and Psychology, and has undertaken further training in Integrative Medicine, Compassionate Inquiry, Yoga, and Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies).

Francoise Bourzat (USA)

MA

Francoise Bourzat holds an MA in Somatic Psychology from New College of California (San Francisco, 1990). She was an adjunct faculty in the East West Psychology Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies from 2012 to 2016. Since 1987, Francoise has apprenticed with shamans and healers in the U.S. and Mexico. In the last 25 years, she has traveled with groups to Mexico, incorporating her counseling practice experience with her knowledge of expanded states of consciousness where she partners with Mazatec healers in Sacred Mushrooms ceremonies. She also leads workshops and contributes to conferences internationally. Her book, Consciousness Medicine is available everywhere books are sold.

Professor Arthur Christopoulos (AUS)

BPharm, PH.D, FAA, FAHMS

Arthur Christopoulos is Professor of Analytical Pharmacology, Dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Director of the Neuromedicines Discovery Centre, Monash University, Parkville, Australia. Prior to his appointment as Dean, he was a Senior Principal Research Fellow of the NHMRC. His work focuses on novel paradigms of drug action at G protein-coupled receptors, the largest drug-target class for current medicines, and has been applied to fundamental and translational studies encompassing neurological and psychiatric disorders, cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes and chronic pain.

Professor Christopoulos has over 340 publications, including in leading journals such as Nature, Science and Cell. He has also been the recipient of multiple major national and international awards. Since 2014-present, Clarivate Analytics have named him a Highly Cited Researcher in Pharmacology and Toxicology, and in 2021 also named him a Highly Cited Researcher in Biology & Biochemistry. In 2017, he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and in 2021 was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.

Dr Rick Doblin (USA)

BSc, PH.D

Rick Doblin, Ph.D., is the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). He received his doctorate in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where he wrote his dissertation on the regulation of the medical uses of psychedelics and marijuana and his Master’s thesis on a survey of oncologists about smoked marijuana vs. the oral THC pill in nausea control for cancer patients. His undergraduate thesis at New College of Florida was a 25-year follow-up to the classic Good Friday Experiment, which evaluated the potential of psychedelic drugs to catalyze religious experiences. He also conducted a thirty-four year follow-up study to Timothy Leary’s Concord Prison Experiment. Rick studied with Dr Stanislav Grof and was among the first to be certified as a Holotropic Breathwork practitioner. His professional goal is to help develop legal contexts for the beneficial uses of psychedelics and marijuana, primarily as prescription medicines but also for personal growth for otherwise healthy people, and eventually to become a legally licensed psychedelic therapist. He founded MAPS in 1986, and currently resides in Boston with his wife and empty rooms from three children who are all in college or recently graduated.

Dr James Fadiman (USA)

BA, Ph.D

Dr James Fadiman B.A. (Harvard) M.A., Ph.D. (Stanford) began his  personal psychedelic research a few weeks before starting his graduate work at Stanford where he did his dissertation on the effectiveness of LSD-assisted therapy.  During the research lull of 40 years, he has held a variety of teaching (San Francisco State, Brandeis, and Stanford) consulting, training, counseling and editorial positions. He has taught in psychology departments, design engineering, and for three decades, at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (now Sofia University) that he co-founded.

James has published textbooks, professional books, a self-help book, a novel, and a series of videos, Drugs: the children are choosing for National Public Television. His books have been published in 8 languages. He has been the subject of a one-hour documentary released by Page3 Films, featured in a National Geographic documentary and had three solo shows of his nature photography.

James had his own consulting firm and sat on two non-profit boards as well as having been the president of several small natural resource companies. He has been involved in researching psychedelic for spiritual, therapeutic and creative uses and is known for his pioneering work on microdosing .  He has published The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys, and most recently, Your Symphony of Selves: Discover and Understand More of Who You Are. The book he is writing now has the working title All About Microdosing.

Rachel Harris

PhD

Rachel Harris is the author of Swimming in the Sacred and Listening to Ayahuasca. A psychologist who has been in private practice for 40 years, she spent 10 years in an academic research department where she published more than 40 scientific studies in peer-reviewed journals and received a National Institutes of Health New Investigator’s Award.  Rachel splits her time between an island in Maine and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Bianca King

M.A.

Bianca King M.A. is a qualified and experienced Psychological Counsellor and Meditation Teacher, practicing in Geneva, Switzerland. She is co-founder with psychiatrist Dr. Julia King Olivier of the Compassionate Care Center where they carry out Psychedelic Assisted Therapy (PAT) sessions. Bianca is a qualified MAPS MDMA therapist and graduate of the CIIS CPTR training. She has been prominent in the Geneva community for running mindfulness courses for the public, the UN, and International organizations.

Throughout her life, Bianca connected with the practice of vipassana meditation and travelled to Asia to participate in teachings and retreats. She found she was learning about a dimension of the human experience that complimented her education and training in psychotherapy and psychology. For her Masters in Psychotherapy and Counselling through the University of Wales, Bianca concentrated on existential issues as she found her heart was in the work of hospice and palliative care that she had originally experienced at the Petrea King Quest for Life Foundation.

Jeff Leifer

MBA, BA

Jeff Leifer is an impact advisor and educator in the Psychedelic Medicine space. He is the founder of Circadian, a cross-sector collaboration and experience lab building engaged, resilient communities and presenting powerful voices in the fields of innovative mental health and the study of consciousness.

Jeff co-founded the Psychedelic Research, Education and Policy (PREP) funding program at the Threshold Foundation and currently serves on the board of directors for the Ketamine Research Foundation, focused on psychedelic-assisted therapies for depression, PTSD and end of life support. Jeff also serves on the advisory board for Anuma, exploring digital group therapeutics that combine virtual reality (VR) with the science of psychedelics.

Jeff leads the Psychedelic Listening Project, which documents diverse views on the state of the psychedelic ecosystem to inform best practices for philanthropists. The project will inform stakeholders looking beyond traditional funding approaches, prioritizing models that encourage human flourishing and shared decision-making.

Jeff has also worked extensively with Indigenous communities in the Global South to support the embodiment of plant medicine lineage, traditional ecological knowledge and forest-based, economic resiliency.

Prior to launching Circadian, Jeff thrived in the world of social finance, pioneering capital reforms, collaborative governance and public finance accountability. Jeff has an MBA from Yale University and BA from the University of California at San Diego.

Dr Gabor Maté CM

BA, MD, Doctor of Laws (honoris causa)

Gabor Maté (pronunciation: GAH-bor MAH-tay) is a retired physician who, after 20 years of family practice and palliative care experience, worked for over a decade in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side with patients challenged by drug addiction and mental illness. The bestselling author of four books published in twenty-five languages, Gabor is an internationally renowned speaker highly sought after for his expertise on addiction, trauma, childhood development, and the relationship of stress and illness.

Gabor’s book on addiction received the Hubert Evans Prize for literary non-fiction. For his groundbreaking medical work and writing he has been awarded the Order of Canada, his country’s highest civilian distinction, and the Civic Merit Award from his hometown, Vancouver. His books include In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction; When the Body Says No; The Cost of Hidden Stress; Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder; and (with Gordon Neufeld) Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers. To learn more, join his enews list at www.drgabormate.com.

Dr David E. Nichols (USA)

BSc, PH.D

Dr David E. Nichols, PhD is an Adjunct Professor of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  Previously he held the Robert C. and Charlotte P. Anderson Distinguished Chair in Pharmacology and was a Distinguished Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at the Purdue University College of Pharmacy.  He received his B.S. degree in chemistry from the University of Cincinnati in 1969, and the PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Iowa in 1973, following which he did postdoctoral work in pharmacology at the University of Iowa, College of Medicine.  In 2004 he was named the Irwin H. Page Lecturer by the International Society for Serotonin Research and in 2006 he received the first Provost’s Outstanding Graduate Mentor award from Purdue University.  He has published more than 300 scientific articles, most of which deal with the relationship between molecular structure and biological action.

Namae Ntumae

B.App.Sc

Namae Ntumae is the founder and Director of CWays Home, a non-profit, dedicated to the training of facilitators of non-ordinary states of consciousness and the creation of experiences to guide people Home, to wholeness.

With an eclectic background as an environmental biologist, management consultant, visionary, mystic, tantrika, and teacher, Namae has been a Guide of the Heart for more than 30 years, in Australia and America. Her work holds love as the most powerful force in human healing, the core condition necessary for altered states experiences to become transformative. Her very feminine approach to the process of awakening is deeply rooted in safety, supporting people’s spontaneity, adaptation and presence.

She is particularly interested in the exploration of the life-death struggle of our species and the many ways psychedelics can create rebirth and awakening experiences that bring us back into right relationship with our only life support system, the Earth.

Professor David Nutt (UK)

BA, MB BChir, MRCP, MA, DM, MRC Psych, FRCPsych, FMedSci, FRCP, FSB

Professor David Nutt is a renowned researcher, policy advisor and author, who is currently Head of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London.

Under the leadership of Professor Nutt, the Psychedelic Research Group at Imperial College is one of the world’s foremost psychedelic research laboratories, publishing landmark research on psychedelic therapies and neuroimaging studies of the psychedelic state.

Professor Nutt has also held many leadership positions in both UK and European academic, scientific and clinical organisations, including presidencies of: the European Brain Council, the British Neuroscience Association, the British Association of Psychopharmacology, the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology.

He was previously Chair of the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

Sara Reed (USA)

MS LMFT

Sara Reed is a mental health futurist and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She has spent her early career examining ways culture informs how we diagnose and treat mental illnesses. Sara has participated as a study therapist and participant in psychedelic therapy research and is currently the lead study therapist at Imperial College London for their psilocybin for OCD trial. She lectures on topics fusing culturally sensitive practices within psychedelic-assisted therapy and advises organizations on anti-oppressive and inclusive practices.

Dr William (Bill) Richards (USA)

PH.D

Dr William A. Richards (Bill), author of Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences,  is Director of Therapy at Sunstone Therapies in Rockville, Maryland (USA), currently focused on the implementation of psychedelic-assisted therapy in palliative care.

Bill also is a psychologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research in Baltimore,  where he and his colleagues have been pursuing research with psilocybin since 1999, and teaches at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Bill’s graduate degrees encompass the psychology of religion, theology,  comparative religion and clinical psychology.

Bill’s involvement with psychedelic research originated in Germany at the University of Göttingen in 1963.  From 1967 to 1977, he pursued research with LSD, DPT, MDA and psilocybin at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center.

Licia Sky

BFA, LMT

Licia Sky is co-founder of the Trauma Research Foundation.

She is a somatic educator, artist, singer-songwriter, and bodyworker who works with traumatized individuals and trains mental health professionals to use mindful meditation in movement, theater exercises, writing, and voice as tools for attunement, healing, and connection. She is a regular instructor in trauma healing workshops at Cape Cod Institute, Kripalu, and Esalen. For the past decade, she has been teaching expanded awareness in workshops to clinicians and laypeople around the world.

www.traumaresearchfoundation.org

Dr Bessel van der Kolk (USA)

MD

Dr Bessel van der Kolk MD, Professor of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine and President, Trauma Research Foundation, has spent his career studying how children and adults adapt to traumatic experiences, and have tried to translate emerging findings from pharmacology, neuroscience and attachment research to develop and study potentially effective treatments for traumatic stress in children and adults.

In 1984, Dr van der Kolk set up one of the first clinical/research centers in the US dedicated to study and treatment of traumatic stress in civilian populations, which has trained numerous researchers and clinicians specializing in the study and treatment of traumatic stress, and which has been continually funded to research the impact of traumatic stress and effective treatment interventions. He conducted the first studies on the effects of SSRIs on PTSD; he was a member of the first neuroimaging team to investigate how trauma changes brain processes, and he did the first research linking BPD and deliberate self-injury to trauma and neglect in early childhood.

Currently, Dr van der Kolk is Principal Investigator of the Boston arm of the MAPS 1 and 2 studies on the effects of MDMA on people with chronic PTSD. His seminal book The Body keeps the Score , has been on the New York Times best seller list for over 230 weeks, and has been translated into 42 different languages.

Barry Walker

M.Ed., LMHC

Barry Walker is a state licensed psychotherapist in New York with over thirty years of experience. His primary focus – anxiety as the motherboard of ‘disorders’. He has a career-long interest in states of consciousness in different personality structures. He also researches the role of psychedelic substances used adjunct to psychotherapy, especially in trauma treatment.

Dr Philip Wolfson (USA)

MD

Dr Philip Wolfson MD is Principal Investigator for the MAPS sponsored Phase 2, FDA approved 18-person study of MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy for individuals with significant anxiety due to life threatening illnesses. His clinical practice with ketamine has informed his leadership role in the development of Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy. Phil’s book The Ketamine Papers has been published by MAPS and is the seminal work in the burgeoning ketamine arena. Phil is a sixties activist, psychiatrist/psychotherapist, writer, practicing Buddhist and psychonaut who has lived in the Bay Area for 38 years. He is the author of Noe – A Father/Son Song of Love, Life, Illness and Death (2011, North Atlantic Books).

In the 1980s, he participated in clinical research with MDMA (Ecstasy). He has been awarded five patents for unique herbal medicines. He is a journalist and author of numerous articles on politics, transformation, psychedelics, consciousness and spirit, and was a founding member of the Heffter Research Institute. Phil has taught in the graduate psychology programs at JFK University, CIIS and the UCSF School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry.