Ibogaine: Past Advances and Future Perspectives

October 20, 2025 12:00 PM to 1:30 PM PST

MEET THE PANELISTS:

Dr. Kirsten Cherian, PhD

Dr. Kirsten Cherian is a Clinical Assistant Professor/Neuropsychologist at the Stanford School of Medicine. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship in 2023 with the Stanford Brain Stimulation Lab where she led a study examining the effect of ibogaine on the sequelae of TBI and combat in Special Forces Veterans. She currently sees patients for neuropsychological evaluations and interventions and participates in research with the Depression Research Clinic. Research interests include the cognitive and psychiatric effects of psychedelics and neuromodulation.

Dr. Deborah Mash, PhD

Miami-based Deborah Mash is a neuroscientist and pharmacologist.  She was the first to conduct FDA-approved clinical studies of the psychedelic drug ibogaine for cocaine use disorders and her laboratory identified noribogaine as a pharmacologically active metabolite. Mash received her Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine. She completed a fellowship in Neurology and Neuroanatomy at Beth Israel Hospital, Harvard Medical School under the direction of M. Marsel Mesulam MD.  She is nationally recognized as a leading researcher in the fields of addiction neurobiology, genomics, and psychedelic medicine, playing a pivotal role in over 300 published studies. She directed a NIH funded research program for over twenty five years.  She is the founder and former director of the University of Miami Brain Endowment Bank, one of the largest biorepositories of postmortem brains donated for research from patients with neurodegenerative, mental health, and substance use disorders.   She is Professor Emerita of Neurology and Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology, University of Miami School of Medicine.

DR. KENNETH ALPER, M.D.

Kenneth Alper, M.D. graduated from the University of Texas at San Antonio with honors in 1984 and completed his residency and subsequently appointed to the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. His highly cited work with ibogaine began with the International Conference on Ibogaine in 1999, which he organized with Howard Lotsof, the originator of the use if ibogaine for the treatment of opioid use disorder, and which  produced what remains the only English language text on the subject, which he edited with Stanley Glick, Ph.D, M.D.. the leading preclinical researcher in the field. Dr. Alper has studied ibogaine as urban ethnomedicine from a notably diverse range of approaches including neuropharmacology, medical ethnography, forensic medicine and cardiovascular toxicology. The mechanism of action of ibogaine is Dr. Alper's supraordinate research focus and his messaging has been consistent over decades, "We don't know how it works and that is what is so interesting about it".  

DR. CHARLES D. KAPLAN, PHD

Dr. Charles D. Kaplan is a retired Research Professor and Associate Dean of Research at the University of Southern California Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. Dr. Kaplan began his research career with doctoral studies in sociology and brain research at UCLA supported by a National Institute of General Medical traineeship. He is an early developer of neurosociology. His early ethnomethodological studies of the use of psychedelic drugs in natural settings as a means for a “vision quest” in the hippie movement informed his neurosociology. He continued his research in neurosociology studying the effects of language and visual imagery on hemispheric interaction using EEG techniques in laboratory settings. This research provided an experimental model for alexithymia. He continued research on psychedelic drugs as tools for the prevention and treatment of psychosocial pathologies. He is a long-standing member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs (formerly the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs) and the Journal of Mental and Nervous Disease and recently an Associate Editor of Substance Use and Misuse (formerly the International Journal of the Addictions). He has a long career in Europe in Germany and the Netherlands. His research interest in ibogaine extends back to the later 1980s as Director of the IVO (Addiction Research Institute) in the Medical Faculty of Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. At IVO, he worked closely both with Professor Jan Bastiaans, a pioneer in treating with LSD patients with the concentration camp syndrome in the 1950s and the Rotterdam Junkieunion, an established government supported patient advocacy group. This team developed an underground heroin addiction medical subculture that continued to spread internatinally. Later as the Director of the Drug Research Division of the Institute for Psychosocial and Socioecological Research, at Maastricht University, The Netherlands, he organized the first international conference on ibogaine treatment for opioid addiction that included presentations from the U.S., the Netherlands and Turkey. His recent contributions to neurosociology and the treatment of psychosocial pathologies have been in the methodology of hyperscanning for the collection and analysis of EEG data during social interactions and in PTSD symptomology, alexithymia and collective memory in genocide survivors. He continues his interest in ibogaine by providing advice and stimulating future research through conferences and social media.

Moderators: