Dr Barbara L. Fredrickson is Director of the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory (PEP Lab) at UNC-Chapel Hill, Past President of the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA), and also of the Society for Affective Science. Among the most highly cited scholars in psychology, Barbara Fredrickson is most known for her Broaden-and-Build Theory of positive emotions, foundational within Positive Psychology for providing a blueprint for how pleasant emotional states, as fleeting as they are, contribute to resilience, well-being, and health. Dr. Fredrickson has published > 150 peer-reviewed articles, and her general audience books, Positivity (2009, www.PositivityRatio.com) and Love 2.0 (2013, www.PositivityResonance.com) have been translated for more than 30 foreign markets. Dr. Fredrickson’s research has received funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NCI, NIA, NCCIM, NIMH, NINR) and has been recognized with numerous honors, including the inaugural Templeton Prize in Positive Psychology from the American Psychological Association, the Career Trajectory Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, the inaugural Christopher Peterson Gold Medal from the International Positive Psychology Association, and the Tang Prize for Achievements in Psychology, awarded to recognize exceptional career contributions to the well-being of humanity. In 2015, through a partnership between UNC-Chapel Hill and Coursera, Dr. Fredrickson began teaching a free, online course on Positive Psychology that has attracted ~340,000 learners across ~200 counties worldwide. Through this and other means, her work influences scholars and practitioners worldwide, within education, business, healthcare, the military, and beyond. Dr. Fredrickson was born and raised in Minnesota and graduated Summa Cum Laude from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota (1986). She received her Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University (1990), with a minor in organizational behavior, and post-doctoral training in psychophysiology from the University of California at Berkeley (1990-1992). Prior to joining the faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill, she held faculty positions at Duke University and the University of Michigan.

Catherine Berman is a doctoral student at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her research spans preventive health behavior, positive emotions, social connection, and ecological and structural conditions that impact wellbeing. Prior to her work at UNC, Catherine graduated from Carleton College in Minnesota and studied behavioral interventions for health and wellbeing at Duke’s Center for Advanced Hindsight.

Taylor West is a doctoral candidate in the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory (a.k.a., the PEP Lab) under the mentorship of Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, within the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her undergraduate and master’s degree in psychology at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. Her research centers on whether and how high-quality interactions with strangers and acquaintances contributes to individual and community flourishing. Taylor’s work is highly interdisciplinary and collaborative and attempts to bridge positive psychology and emotion science to a range of domains and disciplines including economic inequality, intergroup conflict, culture, organizational psychology, affective neuroscience, and psychoneuroimmunology. Research she has led has been published in top academic journals in her field including Emotion, Mindfulness, and Affective Science.

Jieni Zhou graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a major in Psychology and a minor in Education. She received her master’s degree in Developmental Psychology from Cornell University. She is currently a graduate student pursuing a Ph.D. in Social Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She studies the intersectionality of positive emotion and social relationships. Inspired by Fredrickson’s “Broaden-and-Build Theory”, she studies the individual, relational and community level benefits of positive affect sharing in people's daily interactions especially with romantic partners and strangers. Her research also expands on conducive factors such as vantage resources and socio-ecological environment that lead to more frequent moments of co-experienced positive emotions in social encounters.