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Vanessa Shumsky

Associate Director, Events, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability

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Vanessa M Jorion

Maximilian B. Siekierski

Collections Care Specialist for Digital Projects, Preservation

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Max Siekierski

BioDr. Pilleriin Sikka is a Research Scientist at Stanford University School of Medicine, in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine. She is also affiliated with the Department of Psychology at Stanford University. Prior to joining her current role, she completed postdoctoral training in the Heifets Lab in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine and in the Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory, directed by Dr. James J. Gross.

Dr. Sikka received her PhD in Psychology from the University of Turku (Finland), MSc degree in Neuroscience from the University of Oxford (UK), and BSc as well as MSc degrees in Psychology (with specializations in Clinical Psychology and Organizational Psychology) from Tallinn University (Estonia). She has received several prestigious research and teaching awards and secured competitive grants (e.g., Tiny Blue Dot Foundation, Mind Science Foundation) as both principal and co-investigator. With more than a decade of teaching experience, Pilleriin has designed and taught courses in psychology and neuroscience and has mentored numerous undergraduate and master’s students, and is currently supervising several PhD students. In parallel with her research at Stanford, she is also affiliated with the University of Skövde (Sweden) as a Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience and with the University of Turku (Finland) as a Researcher.

Dr. Sikka's research integrates psychology, neuroscience, and anesthesiology to understand how experiences—particularly those arising during altered states of consciousness (i.e., sleep and dreaming, anesthesia, psychedelic states)—produce lasting psychological change and how these mechanisms can be translated into innovative, evidence-based interventions for mental health, well-being, and perioperative care.