Our Team: Leadership Team Faculty Advisory Board

Leadership Team

Michael Baime, MD

Executive Director

  • Associate Professor of Medicine, Director, Penn Program for Mindfulness. Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the founder and Director of the Penn Program for Mindfulness.

Jackie Tileston, MA

Co-Director

  • Professor in Fine Arts with a B.A. from Yale University and an MFA from Indiana University. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions and group exhibitions in Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, and Dallas.

Kelly Kennedy, BA

Director of Operations,
Director of Community Engagement

  • Galápagos Education and Research Alliance, School of Arts and Sciences; Department of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania

    Psychometrics and Business Consultant
    Sama Therapeutics, Inc.

Michael Parella

  • Michael Parella is currently a sophomore in the Nursing School at the University of Pennsylvania. He currently supports the PPC as Associate Director of Communications. Michael's other involvements include serving as the nursing chair on class board, working as a resident advisor, and being a mock trial captain.

Associate Director of Communications

Sarah Sakeer

  • Sarah is fascinated by neurogenesis and neurodegeneration, and believes the phenomena to be two sides of the same coin. Having been mentored by Jason Wallach, PhD—a pharmacologist who is developing novel psychedelics—Sarah studied internalization of the serotonin 5-HT2A receptor during her Master’s program. Currently, Sarah works at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania with Robert Mach, PhD, where her project involves aiding in the development of PET tracers for Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, and related proteinopathies. Sarah hopes to pursue a PhD in Neuroscience in the near future.

Director of Research and Initiatives

Taylor Andrews Flatt, PMHNP

Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner and PhD student in Nursing at the Ohio State University

Founding Member

Victor Pablo Acero, PhD

UPenn Alumni; Postdoctoral Scholar and Manager of Operations & Strategy at Center for Psychedelic Drug Research & Education at Ohio State University

 Founding Member

Phillip White

  • Philip is a Ph.D. student at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy at Saint Joseph University. He graduated from the University of the Sciences in 2018 with a BS in Pharmacology and Toxicology. He worked at Eurofins Lancaster Laboratories Inc. for three years in quality control of biological raw materials for products used in Car-T therapy and the Covid-19 vaccine before returning to his alma mater to pursue his doctorate. He works under Dr. Jason Wallach and leads many projects, including radioligand binding at the 5HT2a receptor, functional biological assays, analytical chemistry of cannabinoids, physical chemistry properties of tryptamines, and virtual reality ligand & receptor modeling. 

Associate Director of Events & Education

Carlo Siracusa, DVM, PhD

Co-Director (Chair)
School of Veterinary Medicine

  • DACVB, Associate Professor of Clinical Animal Behavior and Welfare at Penn Vet. Director of the Small Animal Behavior Service. Veterinarian specialized in behavior medicine, with PhD in Animal Health and Welfare

Shoshana V. Aronowitz, PhD
MSHP, FNP-BC

Co-Director (Chair)
School of Nursing

  • Assistant Professor of Family and Community Health

Renyu Liu, MD, PhD

Co-Director (Chair)
Perelman School of Medicine

  • Professor of Anesthesiology and Neurosurgery. Practicing Physician and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, a dual professor of Anesthesiology and Neurology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, a scholar at the Penn Global Health Center.

Justin McDaniel, PhD

Co-Director (Chair)
School of Arts and Sciences

  • Professor of Religious Studies, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Professor of the Humanities. McDaniel's research foci include Lao, Thai, Pali and Sanskrit literature, art and architecture, and manuscript studies.

Faculty Advisory Board

  • CPHI Senior Fellow, Director of Community Engagement for Public Health Initiatives, Director of Community Health Services at Center for Health Equity Advancement, Associate Director of Center for Community and Population Health Policy

  • Lecturer at the Wharton School. Elizabeth is currently a lecturer at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches Business Communications for Impact

  • Associate Professor/Clinician Educator, Associate Dean for Inclusion, Associate Professor/Clinician Educator at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2) and serves in the role of Associate Dean for Inclusion.

  • PhD, Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry, Director of the Brain-Behavioral Vulnerabilities Division; Center for Studies on Addiction.

  • Professor of Psychiatry at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and the Presbyterian Medical Center of Philadelphia; Staff Physician, CMJC VA Medical Center

  • Professor of Psychiatry; Psychiatrist at the CMJC VA Medical Center

  • Clinical psychologist at the Crescenz VA Medical Center and an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

  • Research Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery UPenn and Director of Operations for the Center for Neurotrauma, Neurodegeneration, & Restoration at the CMC VA Medical Center.

  • Director and Lead Programmer, Virtual Reality Lab at Penn Brain Science Center. Jeffrey R. Vadala holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology (University of Florida 2016), an M.A. with a focus in Archaeology (California State University Los Angeles 2009), and a Bachelor of Science (University of California Riverside 2005).

  • Research Assistant Professor of Psychiatry. Neuroscientist and Research Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

  • Professor of Neurology, Psychology, and Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and the founding director of the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics.

  • Associate Professor in School of Social Policy and Practice. Work focusing on structural interventions in the areas of incarceration, substance use, homelessness and HIV, both at the domestic and international levels.

  • Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care. Interested in the cellular and circuit mechanisms of rapid-acting antidepressants, e.g. ketamine and psilocybin.

  • PhD, Associate Professor of Psychology, West Chester University of Pennsylvania Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

  • Professor of Nursing and Palliative Care in the Department of Biobehavioral Health Sciences and Senior Fellow of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.

  • Associate Director of the Center for Experimental Ethnography. Multimodal cultural and medical anthropologist whose research focuses on questions of bodies, security, healing, and aesthetics.

  • Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Director of Behavioral Health Emergency Services CMJC VA. ScB in Cognitive Neuroscience from Brown University in 2007, an MD from Yale School of Medicine in 2012, and completed her Psychiatry Residency at the University of Pennsylvania in 2016 and Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship in 2017. She provides clinical care in serious mental illness, transgender medicine, and emergency psychiatry and has a civil, administrative, and criminal forensics practice.