Helen Weng, PhD

Dr. Weng is a neuroscientist and clinical psychologist who is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, a core faculty member of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, and an affiliate faculty member of the Neuroscape Center.

Dr. Weng is developing new ways to quantify meditation skills using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and machine learning to identify mental states of body awareness during meditation. She is also using community engagement with the East Bay Meditation Center (Oakland, CA) to increase the diversity of meditators included in neuroscience studies.

Her earlier work showed that short-term compassion meditation may increase both altruistic and neural responses to suffering. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, BBC, and NPR, and she was named by her peers as one of the 10 Powerful Women in the Mindfulness Movement at mindful.org.