Jennifer Drake is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her research program focuses on the psychology of the visual arts. In one line of research, she examines the affective benefits of engaging in the visual arts for children and adults. In a second line of research, she studies the cognitive and perceptual skills underlying drawing ability in artistically gifted children and adult artists. Her research has been funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Imagination Institute supported by the John Templeton Foundation, and PSC-CUNY. Her research has been featured in Scientific American Mind, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, The New York Times, and on National Public Radio. She was named a 2015 “Rising Star” by the Association for Psychological Science and an outstanding early career scholar in 2018 by the American Psychological Association for her work on the emotion regulation benefits of everyday art-making. In 2024, she was named a Fellow of the Society for Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts of the American Psychological Association.

Anjan Chatterjee is Professor of Neurology, Psychology, and Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and the founding director of the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics. He received his BA in Philosophy from Haverford College and MD from the University of Pennsylvania. A past Neurology Chair at Pennsylvania Hospital, his research addresses neuroaesthetics, spatial cognition, language, and neuroethics.

He wrote The Aesthetic Brain and co-edited Brain, Beauty, and Art, as well as Neuroethics in Practice, and The Roots of Cognitive Neuroscience. His editorial services have included several neuroscience, psychology, aesthetics and bioethics journals. He received the Norman Geschwind Prize in Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology from the American Academy of Neurology, the Rudolph Arnheim Prize for contributions to Psychology and the Arts from the American Psychological Association, and the Leadership in Innovation Award from the Global Wellness Institute for his work in neuroaesthetics. He is a founding member of the Board of the International Neuroethics Society, past President of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics, and past President of the Behavioral Neurology Society. He serves on the board of The Global Wellness Institute and was previously on the boards of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Haverford College, the Norris Square Neighborhood Project, and the Associated Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

Thalia Goldstein, Ph.D. is an associate professor and director of the applied developmental psychology program at George Mason University, where she directs the Play, Learning, Arts, and Youth Lab, and co-directs the Mason Arts Research Center (a National Endowment for the Arts Lab). She is the co-editor of the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, and is a fellow of the American Psychological Association. Her research focuses on children’s and adolescent’s social and emotional development through engagement with pretend play and the arts. Goldstein’s academic work has been published in more than 70 articles, and funded by The National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and The John Templeton Foundation. She earned her BA from Cornell University, her MA and PhD from Boston College and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University.

Jessica Hoffmann, Ph.D., is the Director of Implementation Science at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and an Assistant Professor in the Yale Child Study Center. Jessica received her B.A. in psychology and sociology from Brandeis University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in clinical psychology from Case Western Reserve University. Jessica specializes in working within school settings to develop approaches and programming aimed at enhancing children’s creativity, promoting positive school climates, and enhancing mental health. Her current research focuses on the efficacy of two such programs for secondary schools - RULER and inspirED, examining the impact of emotion skills instruction on school climate, creative problem-solving, and emotion regulation ability.