Divya Chander, MD, PhD

Medical Advisor, Extended Reality Safety Initiative (XRSI) & Chair of Neuroscience and Faculty of Medicine, Singularity University

Divya Chander, MD, PhD

Medical Advisor, Extended Reality Safety Initiative (XRSI) & Chair of Neuroscience and Faculty of Medicine, Singularity University

BIOGRAPHY

Divya Chander is an anesthesiologist, neuroscientist, futurist and entrepreneur who works at the intersection of health, data, technology, and data security. She is a practicing physician, Chair of Neuroscience and Faculty of Medicine at Singularity University, former faculty in the Stanford Department of Anesthesiology, and Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council GeoTech Center. An advocate for data and biometric rights, she serves as medical advisor to the Extended Reality Safety Initative (XRSI.org), and is helping develop standards for identity and sensitive healthcare data security. Dr. Chander also leads 2 companies she co-founded during the pandemic – Lucidify, a continuous, intelligent brain monitoring platform for the detection of delirium, and Plexxus, a company building the data security fabric for secure communications and transactions, supporting the integration of IoT devices to help build the world’s connected global immune system. She was named one of 2020’s top digital health innovators by Intelligent Health AI. Dr. Chander also served on a NASA task force for COVID19, and directed the post-pandemic global health initiative for OneShared.World. Her research involves mapping consciousness and writing algorithms for the automated tracking of altered states, elaborating theories of consciousness (which she presented on the TED-NYC and UN stages), predicting the effect of human augmentation on consciousness, and how mapping consciousness in humans may enable us to recognize it in non-human, intelligent beings (both on and off-planet, through initiatives like SETI, where she joins the newly formed Complexity Group). 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. Her desire to alter her own Consciousness is to someday see the Earth rise from the surface of the moon.