Jeffrey Dunne
Chairman of the Board
Jeffrey Dunne is a Chief Systems Engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, where he undertakes research in data sciences and artificial intelligence. He has degrees in both engineering and physics, and a diverse history of intellectual pursuits in energetics, consciousness and cognition, philosophy, linguistics, acoustics, information management, data fusion, virtual and augmented reality, and communications. He is a subject matter expert on open architecture and data strategy, teaches classes in signal processing and the development of data analytics. Personal interests include acting and the writing of plays, books, and music. His first published book, Nexus, introduces the concepts from syntropy and other aspects of consciousness studies in the guise of a fictional novel.
Lynn Ann Cornell
Secretary
Lynn Ann Cornell, Secretary of ICRL, holds a BA degree from Hollis University and has accumulated a diverse work experience, spanning multiple disciplines: education, technology, business and law, predominately in support and administrative roles. She currently works for the College of New Jersey in its Office of Disability Support Services. Lynn Ann has been an administrative assistant to ICRL’s President since 2011, and has extensive familiarity with the organization’s structure and activities, along with a deep commitment to its mission.
Vasileios Basios
Vasileios Basios is a physicist, conducting interdisciplinary research on the foundations of complexity science and nonlinear systems, self-organization and complex matter.
During his formative years, he was tutored by Ilya Prigogine, at ULB where he received his PhD, and by Emilios Bouratinos on meditation and philosophy. He is currently interested in the complex interface between action and information. Other interests include the history of ideas in science and their role in the transformation of science beyond the prevailing naïve, materialistic, mechanistic-reductionist world-view. With others from PEAR, he initiated the Mind-Matter-Mapping Project and has since published several essays for ICRL.
Ian A. Cook
Ian Cook is a Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where he directs the UCLA Depression Research and Clinic Program at the Semel Institute and was the inaugural holder of the Joanne and George Miller and Family Endowed Chair in Depression Research at the Brain Research Institute. He has been a part of the PEAR/ICRL family since 1980, when he was among the first undergraduate students to conduct research at the PEAR lab. He graduated from the Yale School of Medicine and pursued his residency training and research fellowship at UCLA. His research has focused on understanding the relationships among the mind, the brain, and the body, and in translating developments in technology into more effective treatments for disorders of mood and cognition.
Robert Cohen
Bob (Brahmatirtha) was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1949, completed his B.S. in Chemistry at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1971, and received his M.S. in Geology from Rutgers University in 1975. After a twenty-year career serving as a geologist and vice-president of a large regional environmental company, he currently works as an environmental consultant to state governments. He has been a member of the Bhaktivedanta Institute since the inception in 1976, giving a presentation at their First International Conference on Life Comes from Life in 1977, and working on a multitude of projects with R.L. Thompson (Sadaputa) from 1995 through 2008. He is also a certified court mediator. He now serves as the Director of the Bhaktivedanta Institute for Higher Studies.
Lois Witte
Lois received her B.S. from the School of Natural Resources, University of Michigan in 1978 and graduated with a J.D. from the University of Michigan, School of Law and an M.S from the University of Michigan in 1981. Since 1991 she has been employed by the USDA as Senior Counsel, representing the USDA Forest Service in water, natural resource, and public land controversies. She has a particular passion for Indian water law, and spent five years working on a complex Indian water rights settlement involving two Native American tribes and the State of Colorado. Lois is also an active member of her local community, where she established a volunteer reading program at a local elementary school that now includes approximately 40 volunteers who come to the school weekly to assist children with their reading and math skills. She also worked for several years to establish a community garden at this school, obtaining over $35,000 in grants for this project. Lois has been a lifelong student of consciousness research and “anomalies.”
In Memoriam
Brenda J. Dunne
First President
Brenda Dunne, President and Treasurer of ICRL, was Laboratory Manager of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) laboratory from its inception in 1979 until its closing in 2007. With Robert Jahn, she was co-author of three major textbooks on consciousness-related anomalies. She held a Masters degree in developmental psychology from the University of Chicago and was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Wisdom Studies from Ubiquity University. Her deeper interests were in the humanities, the history and philosophy of religion, and cross-disciplinary approaches to the study of consciousness that incorporate metaphysical as well as scientific traditions. She also served as Education Officer of the Society for Scientific Exploration.
Robert G. Jahn
Founder and first Chairman of the ICRL Board
Robert Jahn, Chairman of the Board of ICRL (2007 to 2017), was founder and director of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) laboratory from its establishment in 1979 until its closing in 2007. As an applied physicist and aerospace engineer and Professor of Aerospace Sciences, he served as Dean of the Princeton University School of Engineering and Applied Science for 15 years. He presided over major research programs in advanced aerospace propulsion systems in cooperation with NASA and the U.S. Air Force, for which he was awarded a Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Electric Propulsion. He authored four major textbooks and several hundred publications in various technical fields, and was a recipient of the Curtis W. McGraw Research Award of the American Association of Engineering Education, the prestigious Wyld Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, former Vice President of the Society for Scientific Exploration for 25 years, and for sixteen years was a Director of the Hercules Corporation. In 2006 he received the Edgar Mitchell Award for Noetic Leadership. He served ICRL as Chairman of the Board until his passing in 2017.
1930 – 2017