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Dr. Sam Parnia is a fellow in pulmonary and critical care medicine at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York and an honorary research fellow at the University of Southampton in the UK.  He is one of the world's leading experts on the scientific study of death, the state of the human mind-brain, and near-death experiences. He is the founder and director of the Human Consciousness Project^SM at the University of Southampton, an international consortium of scientists and physicians who have joined forces to research the nature of consciousness and its relationship with the brain, as well as the neuronal processes that mediate and correspond to different facets of consciousness. Dr. Parnia currently leads a new and innovative scientific study, AWARE (AWAreness during Resuscitation) aimed at studying the brain and consciousness during cardiac arrest to discover through science what happens when we die.

A graduate of the Guys and St. Thomas' medical schools in London, Dr. Parnia obtained his doctorate in cell biology from the University of Southampton. He has published numerous articles in peer reviewed scientific journals in the field of pulmonary medicine as well as near-death experiences, and is a current reviewer for the New England Journal of Medicine. He has also served as a member of the Southampton University Trust Hospital Resuscitation Committee, where he launched the first ever study of near-death experiences in the UK. The results of the study received widespread coverage and were published in the medical journal Resuscitation. Dr. Parnia is the author of What Happens When We Die, and his groundbreaking research has been featured on the BBC and Discovery documentary, The Day I Died and will be highlighted in an episode of the National Geographic series Explorer, "At the Moment of Death."