Dr. Helen Weng Promoted to Assistant Professor of Psychiatry

Helen Weng, PhD, one of the Osher Center’s postdoctoral research fellows, has just transitioned to a faculty position in our research program, as Assistant Professor of Psychiatry. She is trained as a clinical psychologist and neuroscientist. Her research interests include body awareness trained by meditation, compassion meditation, and incorporating diverse populations into meditation research.

Dr. Weng just received a K-career development award from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), which will fund her for the next five years in developing new approaches using neuroimaging (fMRI) to better understand what is happening with people’s mental state during meditation practice.

Through the EMBODY study, she will develop a novel functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) task that uses pattern recognition technology to identify mental states during meditation, particularly attention to areas of the body. This project will be conducted at the Neuroscape Center at the UCSF Sandler Neurosciences Center, directed by Dr. Adam Gazzaley, and at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, directed by Dr. Rick Hecht.