David S. Black, Ph.D., M.P.H., Founding Director 

Dr. Black is the Founding Director of the American Mindfulness Research Association, and tenured Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Dr. Black is also a member of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and previously served as Associate Director of Education for the USC Center for Mindfulness Science. His research has been funded by university, private, state and federal grants for two decades. He has authored and mentored early career scientists on over 80 peer-reviewed articles in journals including the JAMA network, the Lancet network, the JNCI network, American Journal of Public Health, and the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

He began his early career in the health sciences and earned a Master of Public Health degree and directed his first grant-funded human subjects research trial prior to finishing his thesis. He trained as a NIH National Cancer Institute (NCI) predoctoral fellow for five years at the USC Institute for Prevention Research, where he latter earned his Ph.D. from the USC Keck School of Medicine. The focus of his independent research program was mindfulness-based addictions prevention and treatment. The originating concepts that evolved into the AMRA project arose from the struggles he faced from conducting research in a new but growing field while writing his dissertation, and so was motivated to bring cohesion to the field with a research monitoring, translation, and dissemination project.

He continued research training as a NIH National Institute on Aging (NIA) postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at Los Angeles Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology. He directed a randomized controlled trial to test the effect of mindfulness training on inflammation in older adults. He went on to articulate a novel conceptual model to illustrate how mindfulness training exerts biological influence from brain to body using a genomic signal transduction framework with downstream biological impact on sympathetic nervous system activity that regulates gene expression by stimulating transcription factors, particularly those associated with the propagation of inflammation in peripheral blood.

He has completed many human behavioral trails including a NIDA funded R01 testing mindfulness training added to residential treatment for substance use disorder; a TRDRP funded state-wide testing digital mindfulness training for smoking cessation, a NIA funded trial testing mindfulness training on poor sleep quality. He enjoys mentoring young scientists and college students. He was awarded the prestigious USC Mentoring Award for Graduate students from the Center for Excellence in Teaching in 2016 and the USC Mentoring Award for Undergraduate students in 2022. He enjoys spending time with his wife and two sons in nature, fly fishing, and camping.  

Selected publications:

Black, D.S., Ioannidis, J., Wee, C., Kirkpatrick, M. (2025). Sex differences in cigarette smoking following a mindfulness-based cessation randomized controlled trial. Addictive Behaviors, 160:108177. 

Black, D.S., Kirkpatrick, M. (2023). Mindfulness training app effect on a cigarette smoking quit attempt: Investigator-blinded 58-county RCT. Journal of the National Cancer Institute: Cancer Spectrum, 7(6):1-11 

Black, D.S., Amaro, H. (2019). Moment-by-Moment in Women’s Recovery (MMWR): Mindfulness-based intervention effects on residential substance use disorder treatment retention in a randomized controlled trial. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 120, 1-11. 

Black, D. S., Christodoulou, G., Cole, S. (2019). Mindfulness meditation and gene expression: a hypothesis-generating framework. Current Opinion in Psychology. 28, 302-6. 

Black, D.S., Cheng, P., Sleight, A., Nguyen, N., Lenz., H., Figueiredo, J. (2017). Mindfulness practice reduces cortisol blunting during chemotherapy: A randomized controlled study of colorectal cancer patients. Cancer, 123(16): 3088-96.

Black, D. S., Slavich, G. M. (2016). Mindfulness meditation and the immune system: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1373(1):13-24. [PMC4940234]

Black, D.S., O’Reilly, G., Olmstead, R., Breen, E., Irwin, M. (2015). Mindfulness meditation and improvement in sleep quality and daytime impairment among older adults with sleep disturbances: A randomized clinical trial. JAMA Internal Medicine, 175(4):494-501.

Black, D.S., Irwin, M., Olmstead, R., Ji, E., Crabb Breen, E. Motivala, S. (2014). Tai Chi meditation effects on Nuclear Factor-κB signaling in lonely older adults: A randomized controlled trial. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 83(5):315-317. 

Black, D.S., Milam, J., & Sussman, S. (2009). Sitting meditation interventions among youth: A review of treatment efficacy. Pediatrics, 124(3): 532-541.