Panel Speaker Bios:

Alexander Levitov

Alexander B. Levitov MD, FCCM, FCCP, RDCS is a professor in the division of Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine and Director of the Ultrasound Training Program at Eastern Virginia Medical School.  He is board certified in Internal Medicine and Critical Care Medicine and a Registered Diagnostic Cardiac Sonographer. Dr. Levitov is a nationally and internationally recognized expert in bedside ultrasound.  He received the Presidential Citation for Outstanding Contributions from the Society of Critical Care Medicine. Dr. Levitov is a visiting professor at Harvard Medical School, Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany and Yangzhou University in China. He directs several Certified Medical Education ultrasound courses in the United States and internationally.  His invitational lectures are too numerous to count. He is a known and respected teacher and is a member of the University of Virginia Academy of distinguished educators since 2006. Dr. Levitov serves on the SCCM’s Critical Care Ultrasound Guidelines Task Force, the ACCP’s Taskforce on Critical Care Ultrasonography, and he is a member of the ACC/AHA’s Non-invasive Evaluation Appropriateness Task Force. Dr. Levitov holds several patents related to medical innovation including ultrasonography.   

David Germano

In addition to teaching in the Department of Religious Studies, where he has advised many doctoral students since 1992, Germano is director of the Tibet Center (www.uvatibetcenter.org), director of the Contemplative Sciences Center (www.uvacontemplation.org), and director of SHANTI (Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts Network of Technological Initiatives, www.shanti.virginia.edu) at the University of Virginia. He also is the founder and director of the Tibetan and Himalayan Library (THL, www.thlib.org), the largest international initiative using digital technology to facilitate collaboration in Tibetan Studies across disciplines.​

His personal research interests are focused on the Nyingma and Bön lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, tantric traditions overall, Buddhist philosophy, and Tibetan historical literature and concerns, particularly from the eighth to fifteenth centuries. He also does research on the contemporary state of Tibetan religion in relationship to China, and non-monastic yogic communities in cultural Tibet, and has broad intellectual interests in international philosophical and literary traditions, including hermeneutics, phenomenology, literary criticism, systems theory, and so forth.

Maria Kozhevnikov

Maria Kozhevnikov is an Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore and also a Visiting Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. Maria Kozhevnikov received her Ph.D. from Technion (Israel) jointly with UC Santa Barbara. Prior to joining the National University of Singapore, she has held faculty positions at Rutgers University (NJ) and George Mason University (VA).  Her research interests focus on examining the neurocognitive bases of creativity and visualization as well as in exploring ways to boost creativity and cognitive capacities through the use of innovative technologies as well as ancient meditative practices.