JEAN MILLAY, Ph.D., taught parapsychology for eight years, served as president of the Parapsychology Research Group, and was an editor/contributor to Silver Threads: Twenty-five Years of Parapsychology Research. Her recent book, Multidimensional Mind: Remote Viewing in Hyperspace, focuses on her 30 years of research into psi phenomena, hypnosis, trance states, channeling, shamanism, and the EEG effects of entrainment with lights, sound, and chemistry. She and Dr. Tim Scully created the Brain-wave Biofeedback Light Sculpture—the impetus for her research on the effects of brainwave synchronization. Her movie, The Psychedelic Experience, won a film festival prize in 1965.

NAASKOW (DJ rezin) holds a BA in Communication Theory and Cultural Studies and currently represents the British Columbia-based downtempo label Interchill records as well as the underground collective the Green Samurai Clan. As an events co-ordinator for Invisible Productions, he conceptualized and produced a conference on altered states of consciousness, emergent mythology and transformative culture at the BOOM Festival in Portugal last summer as part of the ongoing project of creating integrative contexts in which to understand and assess the implications and applications of the psychedelic experience. As a DJ he has been exploring the healing and trance-inducing capacity of music for the past seven years, crafting journeys into sound from post-rave dance floors to chill rooms to entheogenic ritual spaces. For the Mind States IV conference, he will be serving up an organic electronic blend of fresh grooves and global atmospherics during the intermissions.

DAVID E. NICHOLS received his B.S. in Chemistry in 1969 from the University of Cincinnati, and his Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry in 1973 from the University of Iowa. Following post-doctoral work in pharmacology he joined the faculty in Medicinal Chemistry at Purdue University, where he is currently Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology. Nichols is also the president and founder of the Heffter Research Institute. Nichols has published more than 225 research articles, book chapters, and invited reviews on various aspects of the medicinal chemistry and neuropharmacology of centrally-active drugs. He seeks to understand how changes in brain neurochemistry affect behavior. His group is presently the only one in the world that continues to study the psychopharmacology of LSD analogues, and the synthesis for psilocybin developed in his laboratory is the one now used for the commercial preparation of that material. He is one of the foremost authorities on the mechanism of action of psychedelics and related substances. Also among his publications are nearly three dozen studies elucidating details both of the mechanism of action of MDMA and of the biochemical events related to its neurotoxic effects in animals. Nichols coined the term "entactogen" to describe the unique psychopharmacological effects of MDMA and related compounds.

SHELDON NORBERG is the author/performer of the memoir/solo-show Confessions of a Dope Dealer. His lifelong interest in the mind and metaphysics got an early jump-start when he began transcendental meditation at the age of ten. As an American, however, he found the only acceptable metaphysical work available to be in drug dealing, a career that he took to its extremes. A decade of training in meditation, energy work, and Chinese medicine has since repaired him enough to tell his story (one of the highs and inevitable lows of being too high), and get back on the path of holotropic breathwork and shamanism. A harm reduction advocate, he is currently touring his show and lectures to colleges, and has taught in-depth drug education classes to local progressive high schools.

JONATHAN OTT is a prolific and highly regarded writer, translator, publisher, reviewer, and pundit on virtually every aspect of entheogen botany, chemistry, pharmacology, bioassay, culture, history, and politics. The term "entheogen" itself is most closely attributed to him; he was one of the people who helped coin it, and its propogation as a meme is due in large part to its use in his books. Jonathan has also produced and co-produced numerous conferences and seminars on entheogens over the past 25+ years. Jonathan was the translator of Albert Hofmann's 1979 LSD--Mein Sorgenkind (first published in English in 1980 as LSD: My Problem Child), and produced an English translation of On Aztec Botanical Names by Blas Pablo Reko. Articles and excerpts of his books have been translated into numerous other languages. His writing has appeared in numerous journals, and he is co-editor--with Giorgio Samorini--of the bilingual publication Eleusis: Journal of Psychoactive Plants & Compounds.

CYNTHIA PALMER is co-director (with Michael Horowitz) of the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library (the nation's largest psychoactive drug library), and co-editor (also with Horowitz) of Moksha: Aldous Huxley’s Writings on Psychedelics and Sisters of the Extreme: Women Writing on the Drug Experience.

DALE PENDELL is a poet, software engineer, and long-time student of ethnobotany. His poetry has appeared in many journals, and he was the founding editor of KUKSU: Journal of Backcountry Writing. He has led workshops on ethnobotany and ethnopoetics for the Naropa Institute and the Botanical Preservation Corps. Pendell is the author of the books Pharmako/Poeia: Plant Powers, Poisons, and Herbcraft and Living With Barbarians: A Few Plant Poems. He recently released the much-anticipated second volume of his plantastic trilogy, Pharmako/Dynamis: A Guide for Adepts of the Poison Path—Excitantia and Empathogenica.

MARK PESCE is internationally renowned as a writer, educator and as the man who brought virtual reality into the World Wide Web. He has been exploring the frontiers of the future for over two decades. The author of five books, Pesce is widely respected as a futurist, philosopher, and thinker who possesses vision paired with a unique ability to translate abstract concepts into concrete explanations. Mainstream publications such as Forbes ASAP, TIME Digital, WIRED and The New York Times have profiled him and his views on the future. A well-respected journalist, Pesce has written for WIRED, Feed, Salon, and PC Magazine, and serves on the editorial board of Trip magazine. For more, see Pesce's homepage and www.playfulworld.com.

STEVEE POSTMAN is a digital artist living in Portland, Oregon. Working with the union of technology and the organic, he creates neo-pagan, faerie inspired visual transmissions. He is the creator of The Cosmic Tribe Tarot, of which artist Alex Grey has commented: "Stevee's art has the convincing feel of having been created by one who has been to the other side and can harness the most sophisticated technology to articulate the patterns of infinity and archetypal powers which are the fabirc of our divine imagination. His Tarot deck should become an instant classic." Postman's work has appeared in periodicals such as Gnosis, Magical Blend, RFD, MAPS Bulletin, on several book covers, and in numerous galleries. He designed the cover of Mickey Heart's CD Supralingua, and he has created the promotional art for all four Mind States conferences. See www.stevee.com for examples of his art.

VILAYANUR S. RAMACHANDRAN is Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and professor with the Psychology Department and the Neurosciences Program at the University of California, San Diego, and Adjunct Professor of Biology at the Salk Institute. Ramachandran obtained his M.D. from Stanley Medical College and subsequently a Ph.D. from Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. Ramachandran's early research was on visual perception but he is best known for his work in Neurology. He is a fellow of the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla and a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. Ramachandran is a trustee for the San Diego museum of art and has lectured widely on art, visual perception and the brain. He has published over 120 papers in scientific journals (including three invited review articles in the Scientific American), is Editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Human Behaviour and author of the critically acclaimed book Phantoms in the Brain that has been translated into eight languages and formed the basis for a two-part series on Channel Four TV UK and a one-hour PBS special in USA. Newsweek magazine recently named him a member of "The Century Club," one of the "hundred most prominent people to watch in the next century."