
SynBioBeta Speaker
Divya Chander
Lucidify
CEO & Founder
Dr. Divya Chander is a physician, neuroscientist, and futurist who trained at Harvard, UCSF, UCSD, and the Salk Institute. She is currently the Chair of Neuroscience and Faculty in Medicine at Singularity University. She is also a Visiting Scholar in the Stanford Department of Medicine, Biomedical Informatics, and was a member of the Stanford Anesthesiology Faculty for 8 years. Her postdoctoral training Stanford (Deisseroth/de Lecea Labs) allowed her to use light-activated ion channels inserted in DNA (optogenetics) to study sleep and consciousness switches in brains. In the operating room, she applies EEG technology to understand what human brains and the underlying networks look like when they lose and regain consciousness. She also has a precision medicine initiative focused on understanding genetic variability in responses to anesthetic drugs and brain oscillations. Her goal is to understand neural mechanisms of consciousness, as well as the evolution of human consciousness secondary to human augmentation. She is working on devices that read and write the brain (brain mapping, neuromodulation) and link to brain machine interfaces for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes.Her work also crosses into studies of human longevity. There is no extended human lifespan without the preservation of the brain and mind. How do technologies like brain machine interfaces, human augmentation and cryonics affect the future of human consciousness?Divya also works in the field of space life sciences. A finalist for astronaut selection and an alumnus of the International Space University, she has performed remote simulations of trauma rescues, anesthesia and surgery in Mars analogue settings with physicians in the US, France, and the Concordia base in Antarctica. She has also been involved with a consortium that elaborated a road-map for studying the effect of microgravity and radiation on the nervous system, cardiovascular system, cognition and sleep.





































