People

James R. Doty M.D.
Director and Founder of Project Compassion I Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery I Stanford University

Dr. Doty is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Stanford University. He completed his undergraduate training at the University of CA, Irvine and medical school at Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans, LA.  In addition to being a neurosurgeon, he is also an inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist, having given support to a number of charitable organizations including Children as the Peacemakers, Global Healing and Family & Children Services. These charities support a variety of programs throughout the world including those for HIV/AIDS support, blood banks, medical care in third world countries and peace initiatives. Additionally, he has endowed chairs at major universities including Stanford University School of Medicine and his alma mater, Tulane University School of Medicine. As founder of Project Compassion, Dr. Doty works with both the Stanford Institute for Neuro-Innovation and Translational Neuroscience and a variety of scientists from a number of disciplines examining the neural bases for compassion and altruism. He is on the Board of Directors of a number of non-profit foundations including the University of Southern California Brain and Creativity Institute, the Dalai Lama Foundation and the Friends of New Orleans (FONO).

Gary K. Steinberg, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Neurosurgery and the Neurosciences | Director, Stanford Institute for Neuro-Innovation and Translational Neurosciences | Chairman Department of Neurosurgery  |  Stanford University

Dr. Steinberg graduated summa cum laude with Honors in Biology from Yale University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He was accepted into the Medical Scientist Training Program at Stanford University School of Medicine receiving his medical and doctoral degrees in neuroscience in 1980. He completed his surgical internship and residency in Neurological Surgery at Stanford. In 1987, Dr. Steinberg joined the faculty at Stanford as an Assistant Professor in Neurosurgery, being promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 1993 and Professor in 1997. He was instrumental in forming the Stanford Stroke Center in 1991 and is currently the Co-Director. He was appointed Chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at Stanford in 1995 and holds the Bernard and Ronni Lacroute-William Randolph Hearst Endowed Chair of Neurosurgery and the Neurosciences. Dr. Steinberg has also been a member of the Executive Committee of the Neuroscience Institute and of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford since their inceptions.  He is currently the director for the Stanford Institute for Neuro-Innovation and Translational Neurosciences.

Thupten Jinpa, Ph.D.
Visiting Research Scholar, Stanford Institute for Neuro-Innovation and Translational Neurosciences Stanford University; President, Institute of Tibetan Classics

Thupten Jinpa has been a principal English translator to His Holiness the Dalai Lama since 1985. He has translated and edited more than a dozen books by the Dalai Lama including the New York Times bestseller Ethics for the New Millennium (Riverhead, 1999), Transforming the Mind (Thorsons, 2000 ),  and Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality (Morgan Road Books, 2005).  Jinpa's own works include Self, Reality and Reason in Tibetan Philosophy and Mind Training: The Great Collection. Thupten Jinpa received his early education and training as a monk and received the Geshe Lharam degree from Ganden Monastic University, south India. Jinpa holds B.A. Honors in Philosophy and a Ph.D. in Religious Studies, both from Cambridge University, UK, where he also worked as a research fellow in Eastern Religion. Since 1999 Jinpa has been the president of the Institute of Tibetan Classics and editor-in-chief of the Institute's The Library of Tibetan Classics series. Jinpa is an adjunct professor at McGill University’s Faculty of Religious Studies and is a senior contemplative advisor to the Mind and Life Institute, dedicated to fostering creative dialogue between the Buddhist tradition and modern science.

Tenzin Tethong
Distinguished Scholar I Stanford University

Mr. Tethong is the founder of key Tibet initiatives in the U.S. including the Tibet Fund, Tibet House-New York, and the International Campaign for Tibet. He is a former Representative of H.H. the Dalai Lama in New York and Washington, D.C., and former Chairman of the Kashag, the Tibetan Cabinet. Mr. Tethong currently serves as Chairman of the Committee of 100 for Tibet and is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Stanford University. He is President of the Dalai Lama Foundation and a proponent of secular universal ethics.

Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus of Psychology | Stanford University

Philip Zimbardo was born in 1933 and grew up in the South Bronx ghetto of New York City in a poor, uneducated Sicilian-American family. From this experience he learned that people, not material possessions, are our most valuable resource, that diversity should be embraced because it enriches us, and that education is the key to escaping poverty. His education began in New York Public School 52 and later included Monroe High School (with classmate Stanley Milgram), Brooklyn College (published his first research article on race relations), and Yale University for his Ph.D. (in 1959). Dr. Zimbardo has been on the faculty at Yale, New York University, Columbia University, and Stanford University, where he has been a professor since 1968. Among his honorary degrees are those from Greece's Aristotle University, Peru's San Martin University, and the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology (in clinical psychology). For more than 40 years, Dr. Zimbardo has devoted his career to teaching, scientific research, the practice of psychology, and applying psychological knowledge to improve the human condition. Dr. Zimbardo has authored more than 250 articles, chapters, and books on topics that range from exploratory behavior in rats to persuasion, dissonance, hypnosis, cults, shyness, time perspective, deindividuation, prisons, and madness. His Stanford Prison Experiment is considered a classic demonstration of the power of situations to shape human behavior. At the APA convention in the August, 2000, he received the APA Division 1 Hilgard Award for his lifetime contributions to theory and research in general psychology.

Brian A. Wandell, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology and Electrical Engineering | Chairman Department of Psychology | Stanford University

Brian A. Wandell is the first Isaac and Madeline Stein Family Professor. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1979 where he is Chair of Psychology and a member, by courtesy, of Electrical Engineering and Radiology. His research projects center on how we see, spanning topics from visual disorders, reading development in children, to digital imaging devices and algorithms.

He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1973 with a B.S. in mathematics and psychology. In 1977, he earned a Ph.D. in social science from the University of California at Irvine. After a year as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, he joined the faculty of Stanford University in 1979. Professor Wandell was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 1984 and became a full professor in 1988. In 1986, Dr. Wandell won the Troland Research Award from the National Academy of Sciences for his work in color vision. He was made a fellow of the Optical Society of America in 1990; in 1997 he became a McKnight Senior Investigator and received the Edridge Green Medal in Ophthalmology for work in visual neuroscience. In 2000, he was awarded the Macbeth Prize from the Inter-Society Color Council, and in 2007 he was named Electronic Imaging Scientist of the Year by the SPIE/IS&T, and he was awarded the Tillyer Prize from the Optical Society of America in 2008. Wandell was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2003.

Joel Finkelstein
Program Coordinator I Stanford University

Joel is completing his undergraduate degree in neuroscience and has had a long time interest in understanding the brain mechanisms underlying emotion including compassion and empathy. Until joining Project Compassion, he was employed at Google, Inc. most recently working with Google University and the Google School for Personal Growth.

Oona Buckley
Associate, Project Compassion - Stanford University

Oona Buckley came to CCARE after working for private philanthropists in the Bay Area and google.org. She moved here from Nepal in 2006 where she was doing volunteer work in orphanages and in the prison system. Oona’s interest in meditation, compassion, and mindfulness stems from her upbringing in the Far East of Asia where she was born and raised. While most of her professional experience has been in Washington DC and New York City, it is her personal experiences that brought her to work on Project Compassion.