The winner of this year's Schmeidler Outstanding Student Award is Pascal Michael. This annual award goes to a student who excels academically and makes early contributions to the field through conference presentations, research or involvement in one or more of the organizations of the field, and/or who has overcome practical difficulties to study parapsychology. 

Pascal received a BSc Hons (Aberdeen University) in Neuroscience and an MSc (University College London) in Clinical Mental Health Sciences. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Psychology at the University of Greenwich with Dr. David Luke, where his research encompasses the analysis of mystical-type human experiences, both psychopharmacological and spontaneous - specifically, the psychedelic (namely DMT) experience and the near-death experience (NDE). This is with a view to developing a formalized framework of thinking that the NDE is fundamentally an endogenous psychedelic episode, as indicated by its acute, long-term and anomalous effects. As such, Pascal’s interests lie in the continuum of death – from the molecular to the humanistic, and from the transpersonal to the transcendent – and its eventual illumination of the nature of life. 

More information about the PA's annual awards can be found at: http://www.parapsych.org/section/27/awards.aspx.