Manish Saggar, Ph.D.

Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research,

Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences,

Stanford University School of Medicine,

Stanford, CA 94305 USA
Email: saggar@stanford.edu

Education:

1. •Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Texas at Austin, USA. (Aug 2011)
   Dissertation: A computational analysis of meditation
   Advisors: Drs. Risto Miikkulainen and Clifford D. Saron
   

2. •M.S. in Computer Science, University of Texas at Austin, USA. (Aug 2009)
   

3. •B.Tech.  in Information Technology, Indian Institute of Information Technology, India. (May 2005)
   

Research Experience:

1. •Postdoctoral Scholar, CIBSR, Stanford University School of Medicine. (Since 9/2011)
   

2. •Research Assistant, Computer Science, University of Texas at Austin. (2008-2011)
   

3. •Research Associate, Schnyer Lab, Psychology, University of Texas at Austin. (Summer 2007)
   

4. •Research Assistant, Imaging Research Center (IRC), University of Texas at Austin. (2006-2008)
   

Industry Experience:

1. •Software Engineering Intern, Google Inc., Mountain View, CA. (Summer 2008)
   

2. •Software Engineering Intern, Google Inc., Mountain View, CA. (Summer 2006)
   

3. •Software Design Engineer Intern, Microsoft Research & Development Center, India. (Spring 2005)
   

Teaching Experience:

1. •Co-instructor, Fail Faster, Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school), Stanford (Spring 2014)
   

2. •Guest Lecturer, Neuroimaging Research Methods (PSY250), Psychiatry, Stanford (Winter 2014)
   

3. •Co-instructor, Flail or Flourish, Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school), Stanford (Spring 2013)
   

4. •Teaching Assistant, Software Engineering, Computer Science, UT Austin (Spring 2006)
   

5. •Teaching Assistant, Object-oriented Software Development, Computer Science, UT Austin (Fall 2005)
   

Invited Talks:

1. •Center for Childhood Creativity at the Bay Area Discovery Museum, Sausalito, CA (2014)
   

2. •mediaX Conference on Well-being and Productivity in a Globally Connected World, Stanford CA (2014)
   

3. •Hasso Plattner Institute & Stanford Design Thinking Research Program Workshop, Stanford CA (2014)
   

4. •Intellectual Disability and Development Center, Stanford University, Stanford CA (2014)
   

5. •mediaX Roundtable on Well-Being and Productivity in a Globally Connected World, Stanford CA (2014)
   

6. •Friday Seminar Series, Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA (2013)
   

7. •Hasso Plattner Institute & Stanford Design Thinking Research Program, Lake Tahoe CA (2013)
   

8. •Department of Psychiatry Grand Rounds, Stanford University, Stanford, CA (2013)
   

9. •International Computer Science Institute, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA (2011)
   

10. •Department of Neurology, University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA (2011)
    

11. •Texas Interdisciplinary Plan (TIP) Fellows, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX (2011)
    

12. •Turing Scholars Student Association, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX (2011)
    

Workshops:

1. •Organized a brainstorming workshop at the inaugural symposium of Stanford’s Intellectual Disability and Development Center (2014)
   

Honors/Awards:

1. •Child Health Research Institute Postdoctoral grant from the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health and Stanford’s Clinical and Translational Science Award (2014)
   

2. •Seed-grant award for collecting pilot fMRI data from Stanford’s Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging (2013)
   

3. •Francisco J. Varela Memorial Grant Award from the Mind and Life Institute for developing a formal theory of meditation (2006)
   

4. •Merit scholarship during all four years of undergraduate study by the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) for outstanding academic performance (2001-2005)
   

5. •Won several travel awards from the Artificial Intelligence Lab and Dept. of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin to attend and present at national conferences (2005-2011)
   

6. •Selected for the UCLA Advanced Neuroimaging Summer program (lead by Drs. Mark Cohen and Susan Bookheimer) (2012)
   

7. •Won travel award from the Computational Neuroscience Society to present computational analysis of meditation at their annual meeting in San Antonio TX (OCNS 2010).
   

8. •Won travel award to attend the Dynamical Systems in Biology Workshop (Honoring Frank Hoppensteadt's 70th Birthday) at the New York University NY (2008)
   

9. •Won travel award from the Computational Intelligence Society to present computational modeling of single neuron dynamics at their annual meeting in Orlando FL (IJCNN 2007).
   

10. •Won travel award from the Mind and Life Research Institute to present a computational model to understand the mechanisms underlying meditation at their annual retreat in Garrison, NY (MLSRI 2006).
    

11. •All India Rank 96 among 72,000 candidates in IIIT entrance examination (2001)
    

Services/Professional Memberships:

1. •Reviewed for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journals of Neuroscience Letters, Clinical EEG and Neuroscience, & Neuropsychologia
   

2. •Reviewed for the meetings of Human Brain Mapping, Human Robot Interaction, International Conference on Robotics and Automation, and Cognitive Science Society
   

3. •Co-organizer for the Machine Learning journal club at the Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research
   

4. •Member of the Society for Neuroscience (since 2007), IEEE student association (2005-2008), Cognitive Science Society (2005-2009)
   

5. •Graduate Representative Association of Computer Sciences (GRACS) (2006)
   

6. •Google Ambassador for the University of Texas at Austin (2006-2008)
   

Conference Presentations:

1. •Saggar, M. Lepage, J-F, Shelly, E. W., Quintin, E. M., Reiss, A. L. (2012) Effect of sociability, body orientation and face visibility on brain activation in individuals with fragile X syndrome, developmental disability and healthy adults: a novel paradigm (393.06/DDD18). The 42nd annual Society for Neuroscience (SFN) meeting, New Orleans L. A.
   

2. •Saggar, M., Maclean, K.A., Sahdra, B.K., Aichele, S.R., Jacobs, T.L., Zanesco, A.P., Bridwell, D.A., King, B.A., Rosenberg, E.L., Mangun, G.R., Shaver, P.R., Ferrer, E., Wallace, B., Saron, C.D., Miikkulainen, R. (2011) A computational model to understand longitudinal changes in EEG associated with intensive meditation training (930.16/WW42). The 41st annual Society for Neuro- science (SFN) meeting, Washington D.C.
   

3. •Saggar, M., MacLean, K.A., Aichele, S.R., Jacobs, T.L., Zanesco, A.P., Bridwell, D.A., King, B.G., Sahdra, B.K., Rosenberg, E.L., Shaver, P.R., Ferrer, E., Wallace, B.A., Mangun, G.R., Miikkulainen, R., Saron, C.D. (2011) Cortical activation changes associated with intensive meditation training are related to vigilance performance. Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting, San Francisco, CA
   

4. •Saggar, M., Aichele, S.R., Jacobs, T.L., Zanesco, A.P., Bridwell, D.A., Maclean, K.A., King, B.A., Sahdra, B.K., Rosenberg, E.L., Shaver, P.R., Ferrer, E., Wallace, B., Mangun, G.R., Saron, C.D., Miikkulainen, R. (2010) A computational approach to understanding the longitudinal changes in cortical activity associated with intensive meditation training. Oral Presentation at the Compu- tational Neuroscience Society (CNS) meeting, San Antonio, TX. Acceptance rate < 9%
   

5. •Saggar, M., Aichele, S.R., Jacobs, T.L., Zanesco, A.P., Bridwell, D.A., Maclean, K.A., King, B.A., Sahdra, B.K., Rosenberg, E.L., Shaver, P.R., Ferrer, E., Tang, A.C., Wallace, B., Mangun, G.R., Miikkulainen, R., Saron, C.D. (2009) Longitudinal changes in cortical activity associated with inten- sive meditation training (871.2/DD18). The 39th annual Society for Neuroscience (SFN) meeting, Chicago.
   

6. •Maclean, K.A., Aichele, S.R., Bridwell, D.A., Jacobs, T.L., Zanesco, A.P., King, B.A., Saggar, M., Mazaheri, A., Ferrer, E., Rosenberg, E.L., Sahdra, B.K., Shaver, P.R., Wallace, B., Mangun, G.R., Saron, C.D. (2009) Effects of intensive meditation training on sustained attention: Changes in visual event-related potentials, ongoing EEG and behavioral performance (871.3/DD19). The 39th annual Society for Neuroscience (SFN) meeting, Chicago.
   

7. •Schnyer, D., Zeithamova, D., Saggar, M., Williams, V., Trujillo, L., Kornguth, S. (2007) The neural basis of compromised executive control: An fMRI examination of vigilance, assessment, and decision making under conditions of sleep deprivation. Sustaining Performance Under Stress Symposium, Austin, TX.
   

8. •Saggar, M., Satish Kumar, M., Schnyer, D. (2007) Repetition priming in a response learning task using novel objects. Oral Presentation at the 37th annual Society for Neuroscience (SFN) meeting, San Diego.
   

9. •Andoni, S., Saggar, M., Mericli, T., Miikkulainen, R. (2007). Extracting the Dynamics of the Hodgkin-Huxley Model using Recurrent Neural Networks. Computational Neuroscience Society (CNS) meeting, Toronto.
   

10. •Saggar, M., Miikkulainen, R. (2006) A computational approach to meditation. 28th Annual Con- ference of the Cognitive Science Society, Vancouver.
    

11. •Saggar, M., Nandi, G.C. (2003) A Soft Computing Based Design Scheme for Explosive detection and decontamination. International symposium on IT: Emerging Trends at Indian Institute of Information Technology, India.