Contact
For any inquiry regarding the CovSocial project, please use the following e-mail address: office@social.mpg.de
Scientific Head
Prof. Dr. Tania Singer
Role: Scientific Head CovSocial (Phase 1 and Phase 2) and principal applicant BUA Grant in 2020 (Phase 1)
Affiliation: Scientific Head, Research Group Social Neuroscience, Max Planck Society, Berlin
Summary: Tania’s research focuses on human social behavior, social cohesion and cooperation, and social emotions such as empathy and compassion. She is also interested in the plasticity of the social brain and is the leader of the ReSource project, a large-scale long-term study on the effects of mental training on brain plasticity, mental health, stress reduction and increase in resilience, prosocial behavior and cooperation.
Links: www.taniasinger.de, www.social.mpg.de
Scientific cooperation partners
Prof. Dr. Mazda Adli
Role: Principal applicant BUA Grant in 2020 (Phase 1)
Affiliation: Chief Doctor, Fliedner Clinic Berlin, Head of Research Department on Affective Disorders, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (CCM), Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.
Summary: Mazda’s research interests include the study of factors of city life on stress sensitivity and mental health, the investigation of strategies to overcome therapy-resistant depression, and the investigation of genetic factors influencing the therapeutic response to depression.
Links: https://psychiatrie-psychotherapie.charite.de, www.mazda-adli.de, www.fliednerklinikberlin.de
Prof. Dr. Sonja Entringer
Role: Early life Adversity and Stress (Phase1)
Affiliation: Professor at the Institute for Medical Psychology at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin
Summary: Sonja’s research focuses on stress and cellular aging (telomere biology, epigenetics), fetal programming of disease and health, psychobiology of pregnancy, migration and health as well as Ecological-Momentary-Assessment (EMA) methods of stress diagnostics.
Links: medpsych.charite.de/metas/person/person/address_detail/entringer/
Prof. Dr. Manuel Voelkle
Role: Methods and statistical modeling (Phase 1 and Phase 2)
Affiliation: Professor for Psychological Research Methods at the Institute for Psychology at Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin
Summary: Manuel’s research interests focus on the design and analysis of multivariate empirical studies with emphasis on longitudinal research. A large part of his methodological work deals with time-continuous dynamic models.
Prof. Dr. Christine Heim
Role: Early life adversity (Phase 1) and stress markers (Phase 2)
Affiliation: Director of the Institute for medical Psychology, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.
Summary: Christine’s research focuses on neurobiological consequences of early traumatic life experiences, the psychobiology of stress, depression and anxiety disorders, the interaction of stress and dispositions, gene-environment interactions, risk versus resilience as well as translational work to interventions.
Links: medpsych.charite.de/ueber_das_institut/team/institutsleitung/
Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Binder
Role: Genetic and epigenetic markers (Phase 1 and Phase 2)
Affiliation: Executive Director, Max-Planck-Institute of Psychiatry, Department for Translational Research in Psychiatry, Munich
Summary: Elisabeth’s research focuses on stress, trauma, anxiety disorders, depression, posttraumatic stress disorders, genetics and epigenetics as well as gene-environment interactions.
Scientists
Dr. Sarita Silveira
Role: Postdoc CovSocial (Phase 1 and Phase 2)
Affiliation: Research associate in the Research Group Social Neuroscience, Max Planck Society
Summary: Sarita’s research interests include the effects of life experiences on neuro-cognitive functions and mental health, as well as digital mobile technologies as experimental diagnostics and therapeutics.
Links: www.social.mpg.de
Dr. Malvika Godara
Role: Postdoc CovSocial (Phase 1 and Phase 2)
Affiliation: Research associate in the Research Group Social Neuroscience, Max Planck Society
Summary: Malvika’s research interests include looking at risk and resilience factors involved in the onset and maintenance of mood-, stress- and anxiety-based disorders, and developing novel therapeutic interventions.
Links: www.social.mpg.de
Hannah Matthäus
Role: PhD student
Affiliation: Research associate and doctoral student at Research Group Social Neuroscience, Max Planck Society
Summary: In the context of her PhD, she is researching the impact of psychological interventions on stress and loneliness using behavioral and biopsychosocial methods. Additionally, she is interested in how these effects can be predicted by stressor-related changes in vulnerability, resilience and social cohesion.
Links: www.social.mpg.de
Support
Carla Wenzel
Function: Student Assistant CovSocial
Support in all domains of the CovSocial project (see www.covsocial.de)
Carla perceived her Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from FU Berlin. She is currently a BSc Student in Psychology at HU Berlin. Her main task focuses on supporting the data collection in the project and helping to structure data.
Nina Grimme
Function: Student Assistant
Support in all domains of the CovSocial project (see www.covsocial.de)
Nina Grimme is a MSc Student (Biology) at Freie Universität Berlin. Her main task focuses on helping with data collection and data cleaning in R.
Paul Petzold
Intern
MSc Student, Psychology, University of Kassel
Paul earned a BSc in psychology from Chemnitz University of Technology and is currently pursuing a MSc in psychology at the University of Kassel. His main task focuses on the analysis of pre-post state changes of daily and weekly variables over the course of the interventions.
MSc and BSc Students
Jessie Rademacher
MSc Student, Neuroscience, Freie Universitaet Berlin
Jessie’s research focuses on individual differences in crisis-related vulnerability trajectories and their risk and protective factors. She is particularly interested in the application of advanced statistical analysis of longitudinal data.
Marleen Borgert
MSc Student, Psychology, University of Hamburg
Marleen’s research interest focuses on positive personality traits, resilience, and values. Her thesis is about differential mental training intervention effects on empathy, compassion, and theory of mind.
Anna Faschinger
MSc Student, Psychology, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin
Anna’s research focuses on differential effects of socio-emotional and mindfulness training on alexithymia and interoceptive body awareness in the CovSocial project.
Nayeli Arevalo Barrera
MSc Student, Cognitive Science, Technical University of Kaiserslautern
In her thesis, Nayeli will examine whether socio-emotional training has a greater impact on resilience compared to mindfulness-based training. Further, the thesis will explore whether changes in positive attention bias mediate interventional impact, and the role of demographic moderators will be explored.
Vanessa Leins
BSc Student Biology, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin
Vanessa is working with the data collected in the pre-testing of the CovSocial project. In her thesis she will investigate whether there is a correlation between the Cortisol Awakening Response and Emotion Regulation, which was examined through the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ).
Teachers of the Intervention Study (Phase 2)
Cäcilia Krämer
Role: Meditation trainer (CovSocial Phase 2)
Affiliation: MBSR and MSC mindfulness trainer and coach
Summary: Cäcilia is an accredited teacher for mindfulness (MBSR) and mindful self-compassion (MSC-Certified Teacher), founding member of the German MSC-teacher network (head of intervention department), has practiced Yoga on a daily basis since she was 17 years old, and loves the Vipassana/MBSR and Metta/MSC meditation practice.
Links: www.achtsamkeitskultur.de
Oliver Kirchhof
Role: Meditation trainer (CovSocial Phase 2)
Affiliation: MBSR mindfulness trainer, management consultant, and systemic coach
Summary: In his work, he focusses on creating living and working environments in which joy, efficacy, and connectedness are not contradicting one another, but go hand in hand. In order to practice and strengthen the necessary (self-)leadership, communication, and conflict skills Oliver relies on the principles and methods of mindfulness and agility.
Links: www.oliverkirchhof.de
Katharina Schacht
Role: Meditation trainer (CovSocial Phase 2)
Affiliation: Trainer and coach for mindfulness and compassion (MBSR/MBCT/MBCL teacher), proprietor of MBSR-Eppendorf, Hamburg
Summary: As a trainer and coach, she supports people in sustainably strengthening their mental health and well-being. She teaches mindfulness according to the scientifically approved MBSR method (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) by Prof. Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn and the compassion practice MBCL (Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Living) following Dr. Erik van der Brink and Fritz Koster. Her mode of operation includes practical exercises in combination with impulse-speeches and reflection units, thus enabling a holistic understanding of the contents and a lasting learning experience.
Links: www.coaching-mbsr-hamburg.de
Martin Büchele
Role: Meditation trainer (CovSocial Phase 2)
Affiliation: MBSR mindfulness trainer and coach
Summary: Martin is an accredited meditation and MBSR teacher (stress management through mindfulness), mindfulness trainer and coach, such as an organizational consultant. He supports people in coping with stress more easily, being less distracted, increasing their well-being, and communicating more attentively, by using mental practices. As a senior trainer and consultant of Potential Project, the global provider of mindfulness trainings for organisations, he can look back to many years of experience in implementing mental training programs within both big and small companies, such as international governmental organizations.
Links: www.martinbuechele.eu
