Lab Director
Dr. Greenway’s work focuses on non-idealised psychiatric patients, investigating how extra-pharmacological factors influence both psychedelic and conventional therapies. His research develops novel treatment protocols while exploring how interventions can be tailored to individual patients based on their unique life experiences and cultural contexts.
Lab Director
Dr. Lifshitz’s research combines phenomenology, neuroscience, and anthropology to examine how brain plasticity and social context interact to shape subjective experience. In addition to his work on psychedelics, he collaborates with expert contemplatives to better understand how mind-body practices such as meditation and prayer can modulate our perception of the world, animate our imagination, and complicate our usual sense of being a unitary, independent self.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Religious studies and cognitive science; absorption, meditation-related distress and culturally sensitive care for meditators.
Dr. Nathan Fisher is currently a postdoctoral research fellow in the department of Psychiatry at McGill. He graduated from Vanderbilt university in 2011 and then joined the clinical and affective neuroscience laboratory at Brown university where he managed the ‘Varieties of Contemplative Experience’ (VCE) study investigating western Buddhist meditation from 2012 to 2015. He then went on to a PhD program in religious studies with a concentration in cognitive science at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 2015 to 2023. His dissertation explores states of absorption and the dark nights of the soul in Abrahamic contemplative traditions and builds on complex-systems approaches to cognitive and clinical science to propose a culturally sensitive framework for providing care to meditators in distress.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy, the extra-pharmacological factors of psychedelic experiences, and individually tailored care.
Sara de la Salle is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University, working under the supervision of Dr. Kyle Greenway. She completed her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology at the University of Ottawa, examining clinical and electrophysiological correlates of the antidepressant treatment response to single and repeated ketamine infusions in treatment-resistant depression. Her current research focuses on psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy, the extra-pharmacological factors of psychedelic experiences, and the importance of culture and individually-tailoring mental health treatments. Sara is currently supported by the Douglas Utting Fellowship for Studies in Depression at the Department of Psychiatry of the Jewish General Hospital.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Neurophenomenology at the intersection of brain science, nature and art; Forest Therapy guide.
Mar Estarellas is a postdoctoral researcher and a Forest Therapy guide, with a passion for exploring the intersections of brain science, nature, and art. With a focus on understanding how the mind-body relationship attunes to the rhythms of nature, Mar’s work bridges science, creativity, and care. She is involved in a range of projects that combine neurophenomenology with contemplative and ecological approaches. Her work is driven by a profound commitment to enhancing the synergistic human and more-than-human health and wellbeing.
Social Worker and Ph.D. Student
Narrative identity, therapeutic frames and recovery in addiction and depression; manages the Ketamine for Psychiatric Disorders Databank.
Julien is a social worker at the Jewish General Hospital and Ph.D student in social work at the University Ottawa. His doctoral research explores the construction of narrative identity in service users of community-based residential addiction services. Using ethnographic and interview data, his work is mostly focused on comparing the effects of therapeutic frames on patients’ treatment experiences and recovery, in both addiction and depression. He manages the Ketamine for Psychiatric Disorders Databank and is a co-investigator on Improving the process and quality of care of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for Canadians with life-threatening diagnoses based on patients’, caregivers’, and therapists’ perspectives, a project in collaboration with Lakehead University and Vancouver Island University.
Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Psychiatry
Processes of change in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and mindfulness-based interventions.
Joe is a postdoctoral researcher in McGill’s Department of Psychiatry under the supervision of Dr. Kyle Greenway. He completed his PhD in Clinical Psychology at Duke University in 2026, including a predoctoral internship at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. His research examines processes of change in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and mindfulness-based interventions, using methods including ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and EEG to study mind-wandering, reward processing, and therapeutic alliance. Clinically, Joe has trained in evidence-based treatments for mood, anxiety, and personality disorders across cognitive-behavioural and psychodynamic approaches. Prior to his doctoral training, he completed degrees in Psychology and Contemplative Studies at Brown University.
PhD Candidate
Music and mindfulness in psychedelic-assisted therapy; patient choice, cultural identity and treatment expectations in treatment-resistant depression.
Sara G. Gloeckler is a PhD candidate at McGill University, supervised by Drs. Kyle T. Greenway and Soham Rej at the Jewish General Hospital/Lady Davis Institute. She received her undergraduate degrees (B.A., Psychology; B.A., Global Development Studies) from the University of Alberta. Sara studies music use and mindfulness practices during psychedelic-assisted therapy, and she evaluates music preferences and psychedelic use in naturalistic settings. Her research also involves qualitative analyses of patient choice, cultural identity, and treatment expectations of patients diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression. Sara’s projects are currently funded by the Lady Davis Institute/TD Canada Trust Graduate Scholarship Award.
In her spare time, Sara loves being active and spending time with friends and family. She greatly enjoys sport climbing, running, and hiking, as well as doing puzzles or curling up with a good book.
PhD Student, Integrated Program in Neuroscience
How music and guided meditation shape the psychedelic therapy experience.
Léopold is a PhD student in McGill’s Integrated Program in Neuroscience. Drawing on his background as a professional musician, his research examines the role of music in psychedelic therapy and how music-based approaches compare with guided meditation. His work explores how these different forms of support can shape the psychedelic experience and its therapeutic effects.
MSc Student, Integrated Program in Neuroscience
How music can support mental and physical well-being, combining musical and scientific backgrounds.
Elizabeth is a M.Sc. student in the Integrated Program in Neuroscience at McGill, under the supervision of Dr. Alexandre Lehmann and Dr. Kyle Greenway. Her research combines her musical and scientific backgrounds to explore how music can be used to support mental and physical well-being. Outside of research, she enjoys playing the cello and painting.
MSc Student, Mental Health
Advancing research methods and data standardization in psychedelic science.
Elisabeth is an MSc student in Mental Health at McGill University under the supervision of Dr. Kyle Greenway. Her research focuses on improving how psychedelic therapies are studied, with particular interests in data standardization and research methodology. She coordinates the Standardizing Measures in Psychedelic Science (StaMPS) initiative, an international expert-consensus project developing a framework to guide data collection across psychedelic research and care. More broadly, she is interested in how social and professional contexts shape what researchers attend to and prioritize. Her work also extends to contemplative science, including research examining meditation-related difficulties and their interpersonal and contextual dimensions. Elisabeth plans to pursue a PhD in Clinical Psychology.
PhD Graduate in Neuroscience
EEG, fMRI and computational neuro-phenomenology of jhāna meditation, charismatic prayer and psychedelics.
Jonas completed his PhD in Neuroscience at McGill University, supervised by Dr. Michael Lifshitz and co-supervised by Dr. Karl Friston, with funding from the Studienstiftung in Germany. His research combined neurophysiological measures such as EEG and fMRI, computational modelling, and phenomenological interviewing to study Jhāna meditation and charismatic Christian prayer, drawing on the Active Inference Framework to bridge his empirical work with the study of phenomenology. To find out more about Jonas and his work, visit www.jonasmago.com.
PhD Graduate, Integrated Program in Neuroscience
Interpersonal dynamics and biobehavioural synchrony between clinicians and patients in psychedelic and family therapy.
Lena completed her PhD in the Integrated Program in Neuroscience at McGill University, co-supervised by Dr. Michael Lifshitz and Dr. Guillaume Dumas (Université de Montréal). A speech and language pathologist by training, with a BSc from the University of Potsdam and an MSc in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from the University of Amsterdam, her PhD research examined how interpersonal dynamics shape clinical encounters, studying clinician-patient relationships in psychedelic therapy and family dynamics in systemic family therapy through biobehavioural synchrony measures such as dual ECG, EEG hyperscanning, and movement and linguistic analysis. Her work was funded by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation, McGill’s Healthy Brains Healthy Lives initiative, the Mindstrong campaign of the Jewish General Hospital, and the Usona Institute.
MSc Student, Mental Health
Developing an observer-rated scale for trait absorption from ketamine therapy transcripts in treatment-resistant depression.
Alyssa recently completed her MSc in Mental Health in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University under the supervision of Dr. Kyle Greenway. Her master’s research focused on developing and validating novel observer-rated measures of trait absorption and mystical experience in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy and was supported by a SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship – Master’s (CGS-M). Alyssa’s broader interests lie in clinical health psychology, including psychotherapy processes and outcomes, behavioural medicine, stress and psychophysiology, and psycho-oncology. She hopes to pursue a PhD in Clinical Psychology to investigate factors that shape mental and physical health and treatment outcomes.
