Dara G. Ghahremani, PhD is a research professor and neuroscientist in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. His research aims to understand self-regulation, its brain basis, how it is weakened in people with mental health issues, and how it may be strengthened using non-pharmacological interventions. With NIH support, he has been studying the impact of breathing techniques on behavioral and neuroimaging measures of self-regulation and indices of mental health in adolescents and adults who are healthy and those who have problems with addiction. His recent studies have focused on the SKY Schools program (formerly, YES! For Schools), a biopsychosocial workshop for adolescents that combines breathwork with social emotional learning to promote self-regulation. He has published the first study on the program, showing that it reduces impulsive behavior in adolescents. He is also conducting an NIH funded neuroimaging study to measure neural markers of effects of breathwork on emotion regulation. In parallel, he is also examining effects of breathwork on behavioral and neural markers of craving regulation in adolescents with cannabis use disorder. At UCLA, he has teamed with world renowned experts in the neurobiology of breathing physiology and emotion regulation to begin formation of the Center for Neurobiology of Breathing and Emotion. Dr. Ghahremani received his PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from the Psychology Department at Stanford University and was a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA."