People

Portrait of Yowon Choi

Dr. Yowon Choi

Psychologist and meditation teacher

Yowon Choi studied psychology at Yonsei University in Seoul and holds a PhD on happiness and mindfulness from Radboud University Nijmegen. She has worked as a researcher on the World Database of Happiness project at Erasmus University Rotterdam, on the Mind-Brain-Mindfulness project at Radboud University Nijmegen, and at Seoul National University. As a certified psychotherapist in South Korea, she has worked in medical and counselling centres.

She has practised Korean Seon and Vipassana meditation since her youth. She is an MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) trainer and has taught meditation in the Netherlands, Switzerland and South Korea since 2009.

Portrait of Emil Nijhuis

Dr. Emil Nijhuis

Researcher in brain network plasticity

Emil Nijhuis studied artificial intelligence and mathematics at the University of Amsterdam and holds a PhD in neuroscience. At the Donders Institute in Nijmegen, he mapped the network of connections in the human cortex with diffusion MRI and identified its hubs: the regions that link many others.

His research focuses on how brain networks change with experience and training. At KIMN he leads the work on computational brain modelling, and he is preparing brain imaging data from a study of meditators before and after a 10-day Vipassana retreat.

He has practised Vipassana meditation since 2002, with regular retreats in Burma, Nepal, Korea and Europe.