BICS Board of Directors, April 2022

Now that the BICS essay competition has concluded, $1,800,000 in prizes has been awarded and all 29 winning essays have been published here: Contest Winners, BICS is embarking on a new exciting chapter. As a first step, BICS is proud to announce the new group of directors that have been appointed for 2022 and beyond

BICS thanks the wonderful work performed in 2021 by Leslie Kean, Dianne Arcangel, Dr. Jessica Utts, Dr. Christopher Green, Dr. Hal Puthoff and Dr. Brian Weiss. Their remarkable work in judging 204 essays and in managing the complexity of the BICS essay competition will always be remembered.

Below are the ten BICS directors for 2022 and beyond.

Dr. Julie Beischel received her PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology with a minor in Microbiology and Immunology and uses her interdisciplinary training to apply the scientific method in order to explore the mysteries of consciousness. She is co-founder and Director of Research at the Windbridge Research Center, a 501(c)(3) public charity dedicated to easing suffering around dying, death, and what comes next by performing rigorous scientific research and creating free educational materials. Dr. Beischel’s main research interests include experiences of spontaneous, facilitated, assisted, and requested after-death communication. She has been performing peer-reviewed laboratory research with psychic mediums for roughly 20 years.

Julie Beischel, Ph.D .

Katrina Burrus, Ph.D..

Katrina Burrus, PhD is one of the world’s leading experts on international leadership. She is a Master Certified Coach, and facilitates a mastermind for CEO’s of international companies. Her podcast Excellent Executive Coaching is focused on helping coaches thrive and it is downloaded by ten thousand of listeners. Author of three books: Abrasive Leaders, Global Nomadic Leaders, and Managing Brilliant Jerks. She’s worked with Nestle, Novartis, and the United Nations to mention a few.

Nick Cook is an author of 20 fiction and non-fiction book titles in the US and the UK, including several ghost-written Sunday Times bestsellers. A former technology journalist, he is well-known for his ground-breaking, best-selling non-fiction book, The Hunt for Zero Point. He has also written, produced and presented two feature-length documentaries for the History and Discovery channels. As a speaker, Nick imparts his wealth of experience passionately on issues such as global challenges, sustainability, defense and security, the future of technology, the power of story and - tapping the theme of his recent, fact-based thriller, The Grid - the human mind itself. In 2021, Nick was amongst 29 prize winners in the BICS institute’s agenda-setting $1.8 m essay competition on consciousness.

Nick Cook.

Jeffrey Kripal, Ph.D..

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Jeffrey J. Kripal is the Associate Dean of the Faculty and Graduate Programs in the School of the Humanities and the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. He is also the Associate Director of the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Jeff is the author of eight books, including, most recently, The Flip: Who You Really Are andWhy It Matters (Penguin, 2020), where he envisions the future centrality and urgency of the humanities in conversation with the history of science, the philosophy of mind, and our shared ethical, political, and ecological challenges. His full body of work can be seen at http://jeffreyjkripal.com

Elizabeth Greenfield Krohn was a firm skeptic of any type of afterlife before she was struck by lightning in 1988 and had a near-death experience. During the NDE, Elizabeth witnessed her own consciousness surviving her bodily death. Nothing in her life prior to this defining event had prepared her for this transformation from skeptic to seeker. Elizabeth graduated from the University of Houston with a BBA with a concentration in Marketing. She went on to attend law school at the University of Houston. She is co-author, along with Jeffrey Kripal, of Changed in a Flash, the story of her NDE. She is also a winner in the BICS 2021 Essay Competition for her essay The Eternal Life of Consciousness. Elizabeth and her husband Matt live in Houston where they enjoy spending time with their children, grandchildren, and puppy Charlie.

Elizabeth Krohn.

Jeffrey Long M.D..

Jeffrey Long, M.D. is a radiation oncology physician practicing in Houma, Louisiana. Over 20 years ago he founded the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation (nderf.org). Dr. Long has investigated over 3500 near-death experiences (NDEs), which is by far the largest number of NDEs ever scientifically studied. Portions of the NDERF website and survey have been posted in over 30 languages allowing global outreach. The results of his previous research were published in the New York Times bestselling book Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences.

Jeffrey Mishlove is host and producer of the New Thinking Allowed channel on YouTube. This channel now has over 110,000 subscribers and has had over 13 million views. He also hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed series that was shown on public television stations throughout North America from 1987 through 2002. He is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in "Parapsychology" ever awarded by an accredited, American university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980).

Jeffrey Mishove, Ph.D..

Sharon Hewitt Rawlette

Sharon Hewitt Rawlette, PhD, is a philosopher and writer who studies extraordinary experiences and what they have to tell us about consciousness and the deeper nature of the world we live in. She earned her doctorate in philosophy from New York University in 2008, studying metaethics under Thomas Nagel and Sharon Street and writing the bulk of her dissertation while a pensionnaire étrangère at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. From 2008 to 2010, she was Florence Levy Kay Fellow in Ethics at Brandeis University before leaving academia for an independent writing career. Her subsequent research has focused on consciousness, parapsychology, and spirituality, and her writing, in multiple genres, has appeared in peer-reviewed journals as well as in popular venues such as Salon and her Psychology Today blog “Mysteries of Consciousness.” Her books include The Feeling of Value: Moral Realism Grounded in Phenomenal Consciousness (2016), The Source and Significance of Coincidences: A Hard Look at the Astonishing Evidence (2019), and The Supreme Victory of the Heart: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Synchronicity (2020). In November 2021, her essay on the survival of consciousness, “Beyond Death,” was named a runner-up in the BICS essay contest. In addition to being a BICS board member, she is also a supporting researcher for the International Centre for Reincarnation Research.

Leo Ruickbie, FRHistS, FRAI, PhD, is a social scientist specializing in exceptional experiences and beliefs, and the award-winning author of six books and almost a hundred articles, chapters and presentations on the subject. With a doctorate from King’s College, London, he is a Fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Anthropological Institute, and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Northampton, where he is involved with the Exceptional Experiences and Consciousness Studies Research Group. He is also a Professional Member of the Parapsychological Association and a Council Member of the Society for Psychical Research, as well as Editor of its magazine. In 2021, he won third prize in the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies essay contest on the best evidence for life after death, with his essay “The Ghost in the Time Machine.”

Leo Ruickbie, FRHistS, FRAI, PhD.

Helané Wahbeh, M.D., MCR

Helané Wahbeh is the Director of Research at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at Oregon Health & Science University, and president of the Parapsychological Association. Dr. Wahbeh is clinically trained as a naturopathic physician and research trained with a Master of Clinical Research and two post-doctoral research fellowships. Her expertise lies in complementary and alternative medicine, mind-body medicine, posttraumatic stress disorder, and extended human capacities.