On Your Mark
October 28, 2026
UW-Madison School of Pharmacy
October 29 – 30, 2026
Promega Campus, Fitchburg, WI
The 2026 UW-Madison Psychedelic Symposium is a dynamic and transdisciplinary event aimed at expanding awareness, fostering knowledge exchange, and bridging gaps in psychedelic research, education, and policy. The symposium will bring together researchers, graduate students, and key industry stakeholders to share knowledge and facilitate collaboration.
The assignment of National Priority Vouchers earlier this year to psilocybin in the treatment of depression and of methylone for treatment of PTSD adds optimism and confidence that approval by the FDA of such drugs is imminent. The theme of “On Your Mark” for this year’s UW Madison Psychedelic Symposium is chosen to reflect the race of the two front runners to gain approval of psilocybin in the near future. It is acknowledged that this race may only be the first heat of several “events” – what role will these drugs have in the treatment of afflictions such as substance use disorder, anxiety, and even vision disorders? How should these drugs and therapeutic approaches be integrated into existing mental health programs that are already challenged by inadequate access and resources?
The 2026 University of Wisconsin Psychedelic Symposium will bring together experts from across the nation and abroad to present on topics such as:
- Microdosing
- Differential pharmacology of psychedelics
- The impact of psychedelics on spirituality and religious practices
- The role of psychotherapy in psychedelic treatment
- Curated adverse event reports from psychedelic programs in Oregon and Colorado
Nationally recognized radio host Steve Paulson will again moderate multiple panel discussions.
The UW Madison Center for Psychedelic Research and Education would like to thank the Promega Biopharmaceutical Technology Center for hosting and helping support the 6th Annual UW Madison Psychedelic Symposium.
Symposium Details
Symposium Agenda
| Thursday, October 29, 2026 | |
|---|---|
| 8:15 | Check-in/Continental Breakfast |
| 8:45 | Welcome/Introductions
|
| AM Session – Palliative Care and Access | |
| 9:00 | Nursing Considerations for Implementation of Psychedelics in Palliative Care Speaker: Karen Kehl, RN, PhD (NINR) |
| 9:45 | Candace Oglesby-Adepoju, LCPC (Baltimore) |
| 10:30 | Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy in Palliative Care: A Path Toward Equitable Access Speaker: Megan Miller, RN, PhD (UW-Madison) |
| 11:00 | Break |
| 11:15 | Panel Discussion – Moderated by: Steve Paulson
|
| 12:00 | Lunch / Professional Networking & Development Event |
| PM Session – Unintended Outcomes / Microdosing | |
| 1:30 | Real-world use, safety, and mental health efficacy of regulated psilocybin services in Oregon and Colorado Speaker: Scott Thompson (U Colorado) |
| 2:00 | Kari Rockhill (Rocky Mountain Drug & Poison Center) |
| 2:30 | Heather Barkholtz, PhD (UW-Madison) |
| 3:00 | Harriet de Wit, PhD (University of Chicago) |
| 3:30 | Break |
| 3:45 | Panel Discussion – Moderated by: Steve Paulson
|
| 4:30 | Closing Remarks – Cody Wenthur, PhD |
| 5:00 | Reception & Poster Session |
| 6:30 | Speaker Dinner |
| Friday, October 30, 2026 | |
| 8:00 | Continental Breakfast |
| 8:50 | Welcome/Introductions
|
| AM Session – Research Frontiers and Futures | |
| 9:00 | Yevgenia Kozorovitsky, PhD (Northwestern) |
| 9:30 | Charles Nichols, PhD (LSU NOLA) |
| 10:00 | Sandeep Nayak, MD (Johns Hopkins) |
| 10:30 | Break |
| 10:45 | Bev Fergus, MS |
| 11:45 | Michael Sutherland |
| 12:15 | Lunch and Poster Session |
| PM Session – Psychedelic Spirituality and Practice | |
| 1:45 | Jay Michaelson, PhD (Emory University) |
| 2:15 | Medicine or Sacrament?: Healing, Spiritual Care, and Community in Psychedelic Churches Speaker: Jeffrey Breau, PhD (Harvard) |
| 2:45 | Chuck Raison, MD (UW-Madison) |
| 3:15 | On Your Mark… for What? The Case for Considering Psychedelics as Tools, Not Treatments Speaker: Max Wolff, PhD (Humboldt University, Berlin) |
| 4:00 | Break |
| 4:15 | Panel Discussion – Moderated by: Steve Paulson
|
| 5:00 | Closing Remarks – Cody Wenthur, PhD |
| 5:10 | Reception & Poster Session |
| 7:00 | Speaker Dinner |
- Heather Barkholtz, PhD
Assistant Professor, Pharmaceutical Sciences
UW-Madison School of Pharmacy - Jeffrey Breau, MDiv
Harvard Divinity School - Harriet de Wit, PhD
Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience
University of Chicago - Karen A. Kehl, PhD, RN, FPCN
Alumna, UW-Madison - Yevgenia Kozorovitsky, PhD
Associate Professor of Neurobiology
Northwestern University - Jay Michaelson, PhD, JD
Emory Center for Psychedelics & Spirituality
Harvard Law School - Megan Miller, PhD
Assistant Professor
UW-Madison School of Nursing - Sandeep Nayak, MD
Assistant Professor
Medical Director, Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research
- Charles Nichols, PhD
Professor of Pharmacology
LSU New Orleans - Candace Oglesby-Adepoju, LCPC, MA
Jurnee Mental Health Consulting - Charles Raison, MD
Professor of Psychiatry and Human Ecology
UW-Madison Department of Psychiatry - Kari Rockhill, PhD
Assistant Statistical Research Scientist
Rocky Mountain Poison & Drug Safety - Scott Thompson, PhD
Professor, Psychiatry-Psychopharmacology, University of Colorado
University of Colorado - Max Wolff, PhD
Psychologist, Psychotherapist, Clinician-Scientist
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Jeffrey Breau
Emory University – Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality
Jeffrey Breau is a Field Scholar with the Emory Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality, where his research focuses on psychedelic chaplaincy and the modern psychedelic church movement. He recently conducted a three-year, multisite ethnography of novel psychedelic churches in the United States. Jeffrey is an Affiliated Researcher for the Psychedelic Use, Law, and Spiritual Experience initiative at the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School, and he previously led Harvard Divinity School’s Psychedelics and Spirituality initiative. His publications span topics including a new approach to ketamine chaplaincy, the role of ritual and community in psychedelic churches, the historical foundations of the MEQ, and a landscape analysis of U.S. psychedelic facilitation training.
Beverly Fergus, MS PPI
Alumna, UW–Madison
Beverly Fergus is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Pharmacy, where she earned a Master of Science in Psychoactive Pharmaceutical Investigation. Her independent study focused on national public perceptions of psychedelic medicine, producing the first large-scale, mixed-methods national survey of U.S. general adult attitudes toward psychedelic therapy across ten demographic and experiential subgroups. A passionate advocate for psychedelic medicines as treatments for PTSD, depression, and other mental health conditions, Beverly has delivered talks on the importance of psychedelics for mental health care. Her passion intersects public health, policy, and education — focused on the practical question of how psychedelic medicine moves from clinical promise to mainstream acceptance.
Karen Kehl
Alumna, UW–Madison
Karen A. Kehl is the Chief of the Systems and Models of Care Branch at the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR), National Institutes of Health (NIH) where she previously served as a Health Scientist Administrator for End-of-Life and Palliative Care Research. Dr. Kehl’s expertise spans palliative and end-of-life care, family caregiving, advance care planning, symptom management, health services research, and nursing science. Her research has focused on preparing patients and families for serious illness and death, improving hospice and palliative care delivery, and advancing evidence-based models of care.
Jay Michaelson, PhD, JD
Field Scholar, Emory Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality
Visiting Researcher, Harvard Law School
Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson is a field scholar at the Emory Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality and a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School. He holds a PhD in Jewish Thought from Hebrew University, a JD from Yale Law School, and nondenominational rabbinic ordination. For twenty years, Dr. Michaelson’s scholarly work has focused on mysticism, law, sexuality, and religion, and, for the last several years, on psychedelics. At Emory, Dr. Michaelson co-directs the MOSAIC project researching psychedelics and religious communities. Outside the academy, Dr. Michaelson also works as a journalist, writer, and meditation teacher. He lives outside New York City.
Megan Miller
Assistant Professor, UW–Madison School of Nursing
Dr. Megan Miller’s research focuses on spirituality, symptom science, and equity in serious illness care. Drawing on a background in palliative and end-of-life nursing, she uses qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches to explore spiritual well-being, existential distress, and holistic supportive care interventions among adults with cancer. Dr. Miller was the Principal Investigator of the “PATH” study (Perceptions and Attitudes related to Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy), which qualitatively explored perspectives on psilocybin-assisted therapy among a subset of people with cancer who have been underrepresented in research. Her scholarship examines psychedelic-assisted therapy in palliative care, participant diversity in psychedelic trials, and community-engaged approaches to making psychedelic therapies more equitable and accessible.
Charles Nichols
Professor, LSU Health Sciences Center
Dr. Nichols, Professor of Pharmacology at LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, is considered one of the world’s top experts on the biological effects of psychedelics in the brain and body. Key discoveries he and his laboratory have made include elucidation of the effects of psychedelics on gene expression in the brain, identification, and characterization of the specific cells in the brain that directly respond to psychedelics, and the development of new experimental systems recapitulating the long-lasting antidepressant-like effects of psilocybin for mechanistic study. The Nichols lab also discovered that psychedelics are extremely potent anti-inflammatory agents that can have full efficacy at levels far below those necessary to induce behavioral effects and is developing potential new therapies to treat inflammatory-related disorders. He is President of the International Society for Research on Psychedelics, Co-Editor in Chief of the journal Psychedelic Medicine, Vice President of the International Society for Serotonin Research, a board member of the Heffter Research Institute, and Co-founder of 2A Biosciences.
Michael Sutherland
Doctoral Student, Neuroscience Training Program, UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health
Michael Sutherland is a first-year PhD student in the Neuroscience Training Program at UW Madison. Since completing his BS in Neurobiology from UW Madison in 2024, Michael has worked on multiple clinical trials under the umbrella of the Center for Psychedelic Research and Education, primarily using TMS-EEG to investigate the long-term neuroplastic effects of psilocybin in the RECAP2 study. Michael is currently a rotating PhD student and is interested in utilizing sleep, anesthesia, psychedelics, and non-invasive brain stimulation as experimental tools to understand the electrophysiological mechanisms of consciousness.
Scott M. Thompson
Department of Psychiatry – University of Colorado School of Medicine
Scott Thompson is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Scott’s research is focused on understanding what goes wrong in the brain in patients suffering from depression and using that knowledge to identify novel therapeutic strategies for treatment. His studies in rodents led to several novel drugs, currently in development, and novel approaches for increasing the utility and lowering the cost of using psychedelic compounds in psychiatry. In this capacity, he fosters drug development and clinical trial opportunities as Director of Novel Therapeutics for the Department of Psychiatry’s Brain and Behavior Innovation Center. He is also a co-founder of a biotech startup, ProNovo Therapeutics, developing novel drugs for treating psychiatric disease. Scott directs the Colorado Psychedelic Public Policy Partnership, providing scientific and medical advice to the State as they write the laws governing the implementation of the Natural Medicines Act, which created a legalized, regulated path for psilocybin services.
Steve Paulson
Journalist
Steve Paulson is a Peabody Award-winning journalist based in Madison, WI. He was the co-founder and executive producer of the public radio show To The Best Of Our Knowledge. He’s now the host of Luminous, a podcast about the science, philosophy and culture of psychedelics, and also the co-host of Wonder Cabinet, a podcast about science, nature and re-enchanting the world. His radio stories have been broadcast on NPR, and he’s written for Nautilus, Salon, Slate and the Los Angeles Review of Books. His book, Atoms and Eden: Conversations on Religion and Science, was published by Oxford University Press.
Max Wolff
Humboldt University Berlin
Max Wolff is a psychologist, psychotherapist, and clinician-scientist at Humboldt University Berlin, Germany. His research bridges psychedelic and psychotherapy research and explores psychological change processes associated with altered states of consciousness. He has contributed as a researcher and therapist to several clinical trials in the field, and is committed to advancing professional training programs such as the MIND Foundation’s Augmented Psychotherapy Training (APT), which he directed until 2025, and the OPEN Foundation’s Advanced Education in Psychedelic Therapy (ADEPT), whose self-experience curriculum he supports.
– Please Note: –
NO ONSITE REGISTRATION will be available
Symposium dates:
Oct 29 – 30, 2026
Event Location:
BioPharmaceutical Technology Center
Promega Campus
5445 E Cheryl Pkwy
Fitchburg, WI
Registration fee
- $275 for 2 days
- $150 for one day, either Thur Oct 29 or Friday Oct 30
- Grad Students: $50 per day, either Thur Nov 13 or Fri Nov 14
Grad Students: $100 to attend both days
Registration deadline: Oct 26, 2026
Refund Policy: A $40 cancellation fee will be applied to refund requests up to Oct 21. No refunds will be granted after Oct 21.
Accommodations
Information coming soon