Divya Chander, MD, PhD

Chair Neuroscience, Singularity Group

Divya Chander is a Harvard, Stanford, UCSF, UCSD trained anesthesiologist, neuroscientist, and futurist who also works at the intersection of health, data, technology, and data security. She is a practicing physician, Chair of Neuroscience and Faculty of Medicine at the Singularity Group,  Loomis Innovation Council member at the Stimson Center, Atlantic Council Councilor, and  former faculty in the Stanford Department of Anesthesiology. An advocate for data and biometric rights, she serves as medical advisor to the Extended Reality Safety Initiative (XRSI.org), and is helping develop standards for identity and sensitive healthcare data security. Dr. Chander also has founded a continuous, intelligent brain monitoring platform for the detection of delirium.  Her research involves mapping consciousness and writing algorithms for the automated tracking of altered states, elaborating theories of consciousness (which she presented on the TED-NYC and UN stages), predicting the effect of human augmentation on consciousness, and defining how mapping consciousness in humans may enable us to recognize it in non-human, intelligent beings (both on and off-planet, through initiatives like SETI. Dr. Chander also has expertise in space life sciences and medicine. A finalist for astronaut selection and an alumnus of the International Space University, Dr. Chander has performed remote simulations of trauma rescues, anesthesia and surgery in Mars analogue settings. She continues to advise and mentor numerous companies in the space life sciences and space medicine domains.