Queens University Research Consortium

Roddy Cowie was born in 1950. He studied philosophy and psychology at Stirling and UCLA as an undergraduate, and received his PhD from Sussex for research on relationships between human and machine vision. He was appointed lecturer in the psychology department at Queen's, Belfast in 1975, senior lecturer in 1991, and professor in 2003.

He has continued to work on the relationship between computational modeling and visual phenomena where people's subjective experience conflict with 'rational' expectations, including impossible objects, misperception of motion, reading errors, and recovery of structure from simple pictures. Research on another of these phenomena, 'speechreading', led to an academic and practical interest in deafness, particularly the subjective experience of deafness, and the way deafness affects speech.

With Dr E Douglas-Cowie (QUB), he explored computational methods of analyzing deafened people's speech. These generalized to other speech varieties that convey information about the speaker – varieties associated with social class, mental disorder, 'phone voice', and expressive reading. His recent work, arising from EC collaborations with J Taylor (KCL), S Kollias (NTUA) and others, has focused on the perception of emotion, where both verbal and visual cues function to convey intensely subjective experiences.

His main outside interests are music (folk and choral), religion (he is a lay reader in the Church of Ireland), and his family. (He is married to Professor E. Douglas-Cowie and they have two children.)

Conditions of the emotions are on the increase and already at pandemic proportions; with the data gathered, through interaction within the consortium, new branches of mental health practice are emerging, marking the dawn of a new era in the treatment of a wide range of conditions including CFS/ME and anxiety disorders.

Dr Francis Teeney is a Research Fellow and Psychologist at Queen's University Belfast where he is a member of the Social Issues and Health Cluster. He is also a Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen.

In 2004, Francis became Project Manager for HUMAINE – an EU funded 34 partner/ university worldwide network analyzing emotions. Indeed his work in this emotional based research is reflected in is current investigations into the role of emotions in energy disorders such as anxiety, ME/CFS.

Francis' recent activities involve identity and victimhood involving collaboration between the University of Aberdeen and Queen's University Belfast.

Francis was involved in the Northern Ireland Peace Process, held numerous workshops and seminars for victims emotionally affected by the conflict, is an NLP practitioner and is at the forefront of forming an academic research consortium into the causes and treatment of anxiety and ME/CFS with Dr David Mickel, Psychologist Kyle Davies and Charles Linden.

With the assistance and guidance of his close friend and colleague, Professor Roddy Cowie of Queen's University School of Psychology, his objective is to develop a greater understanding of the role of emotions in human health and well-being.

Dr David Mickel qualified as a Medical Doctor in 1992 before going on to specialize in General Practice in 1996. He spent 6 years working full-time in practice in Elgin, Scotland.

He developed an interest in CFS/ME and Fibromyalgia during this time and became frustrated by the lack of success of conventional and alternative treatments for the conditions. He spent a number of years researching and experimenting with a variety of approaches and methods until he finally developed the process of treatment now known as Mickel Therapy^®.

In 2002, following the success of this treatment, he resigned from his position as General Practitioner in order to commit fully to treating sufferers.

He founded the organization Mickel Health Initiatives Ltd with the aim of offering high quality treatment and education in the theories and processes that he and the team have developed and evolved over recent years. He currently provides a private therapy service in Elgin treating CFS/ME and Fibromyalgia, IBS and other 'Energy Disorders' such as IBS, Anxiety and Depression as physical conditions.

He travels internationally to provide training, seminars and workshops with fellow MHI Director, Kyle Davies.

Romulo Valdez, Jr., Ph.D. is one of America's leading Psychologists who is very highly qualified and has extensive experience working with children, adolescents and adults suffering from anxiety and depression particularly Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.

Dr. Valdez obtained his undergraduate degree at the University of Vermont earning a B.A. in Religion with minor in Psychology. His M.A. degree in Clinical Psychology is from Central Michigan University. His Ph.D. was from Michigan State University where his major emphasis was on Counseling Psychology. He minored in Developmental Psychology and Statistics and Research Design.

Dr. Valdez did his clinical training under the very best professors in the field at the Department of Psychiatry at both Dartmouth Medical School and Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Valdez has worked in a variety of settings including inpatient hospital units, outpatient clinics and he was also the Psychologist at the Phillips Exeter Academy.

Dr. Valdez has held a past academic post at Dartmouth Medical School, Department of Psychiatry. He was an integral member of an NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) research project at the University of Pennsylvania, Psychotherapy Research Center, studying the treatment of crack cocaine addicts. More recently, he has worked with the Center for Psychological Trauma at Dartmouth Medical School, Department of Psychiatry.

Currently, Dr. Valdez consults for various agencies and hospitals that do work with children and adolescents and war veterans suffering from a variety of psychiatric disorders, particularly Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.

Dr. Valdez is a longtime member in good standing with the American Psychological Association and the National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology. He is also a Fellow with the New Hampshire Psychological Association.