Psychedelic Symposium 2025: Reset
Save the Date:
November 13 – 14, 2025
Promega Campus, Fitchburg, WI
The 2025 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 term “reset” can have many different meanings, depending on the context. Traditionally, it has meant a restart, often with the goal of correcting or improving a thing or action. More broadly, reset has been used to help conceptualize technology — such as restoring a device — back to its original state, while concepts like the “The Great Reset” have described large-scale economic and societal shifts. Psychedelic science and therapy have hypothesized various kinds of resets, relating to how substances and integration might help people break out of rigid thought patterns, alleviating issues like intractable depression, anxiety, or PTSD. In the realm of wellness or psychology, reset has often referred to a mental or emotional refresh and has been associated with reevaluating behavior, changing habits, or taking a break. In 2025, reset is also a useful way to think about the psychedelic field itself.
Presentations and panel discussions will focus on four priority topic areas:
- Industry
- Safety & Regulation
- Neuroscience, Neuropharmacology & Clinical
Visiting guest speakers, panelists and moderators will include:
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- Manish Agrawal, Sunstone Therapies
- Josephine Anderson, UW–Madison
- Matthew Baggott, Tactogen
- Matthew Banks, UW–Madison
- Ashton Barber, UW–Madison
- Zoe Dubus, University of Saskatchewan
- Josh Hardman, Psychedelic Alpha
- Shayla Love, The Atlantic
- Franklin King, Harvard Medical School
- Christine McLeave, University of Alaska
- Katherine Nautiyal, Dartmouth College
- Chris Stauffer, Portland VA
- Bill Linton, Usona
- Steve Paulson, UW–Madison
Speaker Bios
Industry Talks & Panel
Manish Agrawal
Founder and CEO, Sunstone Therapies
Dr. Manish Agrawal’s extensive background and experience spans medicine, engineering, philosophy, ethics, and research. He currently serves as Founder & CEO of Sunstone Therapies, a leader in the delivery of psychedelic-assisted therapy in the medical setting and the development and execution of clinical trials for those affected by complex mental health challenges. Manish previously held the position of Co-Director of Clinical Research at Maryland Oncology Hematology, where he dedicated 15 years to the care of cancer patients. He completed a fellowship at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, and his residency at Georgetown University Medical Center.
Jackie von Salm
Co-founder and CSO, Psilera, Inc
Dr. Jackie von Salm is Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Psilera, Inc., a Florida-based biotechnology company founded in 2019 focused on discovering new treatments for mental health. Dr. von Salm graduated with Honor’s (magna cum laude) with her B.A. and Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of South Florida with a focus on natural products drug discovery and chemical ecology. She was named the Most Read Author in 2017 by the American Chemical Society (ACS), awarded the Cosmic Sister Emerging Voices Award in 2019, the ACS ElSohly Award in 2020, and has been featured in National Geographic, Nature, and the Wall Street Journal.
Safety & Regulation
Zoë Dubus
Banting Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Sakskatchewan
Zoë Dubus is a post-doctoral researcher in history of medicine at Cermes3 (Université Paris Cité, CNRS, Inserm), in the ARCHE project. She obtained a funding from the Institut pour la Recherche en Santé Publique (IRESP), which seeks to document the history of clinical trials involving psychedelics in addiction treatment and psychiatric care in France and Anglo-American country. Author of numerous publications, her work aims more generally to understand the relationship between doctors and psychotropic drugs, conceived alternatively as innovative medicines or as toxic substances.
Neuroscience & Neoropharmacology & Clinical
Josephine Anderson
PhD Candidate, UW-Madison
Josephine Anderson is a current PhD Student at the UW Madison School of Pharmacy studying Pharmaceutical Sciences. She brings three years of analytical chemistry research experience to her current position, and has published in both the Journal of Natural Products and Molecules. Josephine’s current research is a collaboration with Boston Children’s Hospital centering around the potential effects of maternal ingestion of serotonergic hallucinogens on fetal development. Her specific focus is on the pharmacokinetics of maternal-fetal transfer of the drugs of interest, and developing methods of detection to aid said study.
Ashton Barber
PhD Candidate, UW-Madison
Ashton Barber is a 5th year PhD candidate in Ned Kalin’s lab at UW-Madison. She is passionate about understanding and developing novel treatments for mental health disorders. Her thesis work focuses on investigating the effects of ketamine and psilocybin on anxiety-related behaviors in nonhuman primates.
Kate Nautiyal
Assistant Professor – Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College
Kate Nautiyal is an Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College. As a behavioral neuroscientist, Kate uses preclinical models to understand the mechanisms through which psilocybin changes the brain to induce persisting antidepressant effects.