Divya Chander MD, PhD

Dr. Chander is a physician, neuroscientist, and futurist who trained at Harvard, UCSD, UCSF, and the Salk Institute. She spent 9 years on the Anesthesiology Faculty at Stanford University and 7 years as Medicine Faculty at Singularity University (2010). Her postdoctoral training in optogenetic technology was conducted in the laboratories of Karl Deisseroth and Luis de Lecea at Stanford, where she used light-activated ion channels inserted in DNA to study sleep and consciousness switches in brains. In the operating room, she applies EEG technology to understand what human brains look like when they lose and regain consciousness, and has recently developed a precision medicine initiative aimed at understanding genetic variability in responses to anesthetic drugs. Her goal is to understand the neural mechanisms of consciousness. She is currently working on applications of neural wearable devices to crossover consumer and medical markets. She also works in the field of space life sciences. An alumnus of the International Space University,

Dr. Chander has performed remote simulations of trauma rescues, anesthesia and surgery in Mars analog settings with physicians in the US, France, and the Concordia base in Antarctica. Currently, she is involved with a consortium that is providing a road-map for studying the effect of microgravity and radiation on the nervous system, cardiovascular system, cognition, and sleep.