“Characterizing the Nature of Spiritual Dreams in Positively Transforming the Dreamer’s Life Trajectory”
S. Thomas Parker Memorial Fund
Stanford University
Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Dr. Zulkayda Mamat earned her doctorate in medical sciences (cognitive neuroscience) from Trinity College at University of Cambridge. During her doctoral studies, she mostly focused on the intersection among forgetting, thought control, and mental wellbeing. Her primary research project was to develop a videoconferencing and app-based cognitive training program to facilitate suppression of intrusive worries in order to improve overall mental wellbeing. She also developed a survey to investigate the extent to which people selectively forget unpleasant events and tasks, as well as their tendencies to engage in different forms of thought control. Such studies are all aimed to investigate what facilitates healing for individuals with intrusive thoughts, be they traumatic memory flashbacks in PTSD, rumination in depression, or obsessions in OCD. During her postdoctoral research, she intends to expand upon her research interests into trauma-focused therapeutic interventions while working with a clinical population struggling with PTSD symptoms. In addition to her PhD, she is a graduate of the Islamic Psychology program at Cambridge Muslim College and is currently working as a remote researcher at its Islamic Psychology Lab. Aside from academic research, she is passionate about empowering the Uyghur diaspora and spends her free time organizing and delivering events related to Uyghur mental health.