Rohan Gunatillake + Tracy Dennis

Can technology make us more mindful? Rohan Gunatillake, creator of the best-selling meditation app buddhify meets with Psychology professor Tracy Dennis to explore technology’s role in meditation and the seemingly contradictory act of “plugging in to unplug.”

About the Speakers

Rohan Gunatillake, named by Wired magazine in their “Smart List of 50 people who will change the world,” is the Director of Mindfulness Everywhere, the company responsible for creating Kara, Sleepfulness, Cards for Mindfulness and the best-selling hit app buddhify. Rohan’s first book Modern Mindfulness will be published in the US in January.

Dr. Tracy Dennis is an emotion scientist and Professor in the Psychology Department at Hunter College of the City University of New York. She has translated two decades of her research on the anxious brain and the fundamental impact of emotions on health into the development of clinically-validated digital mental health tools, including her stress-reduction app Personal Zen. Her work in mindfulness-based stress reduction in at-risk youth is the topic of the documentary film “Changing Minds at Concord High.” She explores ideas about growing up and growing old in the digital age in her blog Psyche’s Circuitry. She is the co-director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Health Technology and Wellness at Hunter College and the Stress, Anxiety, and Resilience Research Center. Dr. Dennis has appeared on stage at the Rubin for three previous Brainwave sessions: with Congressman Tim Ryan, the astronaut Scott Parazynski, and martial artist Shi Yan Ming.