Divya Chander joins the Stimson Center as an anesthesiologist, neuroscientist, and futurist who also works at the intersection of health, data, technology, and data security. She is a practicing physician, Chair of Neuroscience and Faculty of Medicine at the Singularity Group, and Senior Nonresident Fellow at the Atlantic Council GeoTech Center. Dr. Chander spent time at Stanford BioX as faculty of the Stanford School of Medicine, caring for patients in the operating room, measuring brain activity, training residents, and using optogenetics to manipulate and explore brain states. She is an advocate for data and biometric rights, and serves as medical advisor to the Extended Reality Safety Initiative (XRSI.org), helping develop standards for identity and sensitive healthcare data security, and exploring alternate internet architectures to support digital identity and biometrics. Dr. Chander has also founded a continuous, intelligent brain monitoring platform for the detection of changes in states of consciousness. Her research involves mapping consciousness and writing algorithms for the automated tracking of altered states, developing and testing new theories of consciousness, predicting the effect of human augmentation on consciousness, and applying consciousness mapping in humans may enable us to recognize it in non-human, intelligent beings (both on and off-planet). Dr. Chander also contributes to space life sciences and medicine. A finalist for astronaut selection and an alumnus of the International Space University, Dr. Chander has performed remote simulations of trauma rescues, anesthesia and surgery in Mars analogue settings. She is developing models for critical care, surgical and anesthesia facilities to enable human space travel.
