Helen Weng

Helen Weng, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in Psychiatry, at the UC San Francisco Osher Center for Integrative Medicine and Neuroscape Center. Trained as a neuroscientist and clinical psychologist, she studies how meditation may improve social and physical health using a neuroscientific perspective. Dr. Weng has developed new ways to quantify meditation skills using machine learning and fMRI data to identify mental states during meditation. As part of an Intersectional Neuroscience framework, she is also increasing the diversity of meditators in neuroscience studies using community engagement with the East Bay Meditation Center (Oakland, CA). Her earlier work showed that compassion meditation may increase both altruistic and neural responses to suffering, and has been featured in the NY Times and NPR. She had the honor of presenting to His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 2012 and 2016, was named one of the 12 Powerful Women in the Mindfulness Movement at mindful.org in 2019.