Stuart Hameroff

Dr. Stuart Hameroff, a world leader in consciousness studies, is a researcher and professor emeritus with AABC. After a long clinical career in anesthesiology at University of Arizona-Banner hospitals, Professor Hameroff will focus on academic pursuits which include 1) 30 years collaborating with Nobel laureate Sir Roger Penrose on the Orch OR theory of consciousness, based on quantum effects in microtubules inside brain neurons, 2) research on anesthesia dampening of microtubule quantum activities, 3) launching and managing The Science of Consciousness (‘TSC’) conferences for 32 years, the world’s leading gathering on all aspects of the nature of our existence, 4) co-founding (in 1998) and directing the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, 5) initiating the educational undergraduate minor in Consciousness Studies in SBS, including the ‘Thomas G. Bever and Stuart R Hameroff Chair’ in Consciousness Studies. How did he arrive in AABC?

In 2017 Hameroff wrote an article suggesting that quantum mechanisms proposed by Penrose to result in proto-conscious experience would have been occurring and available to organic molecules at the origin of life on earth in a ‘primordial soup’. The article suggested that primitive pleasure was the spark of life, causing its origin and evolution. In 2022 Dante Lauretta, AABC founding director, planetary scientist and leader of NASA’s 20-year OSIRIS REx mission to retrieve organic molecules from the asteroid Bennu was pondering how to search for life’s origins in the Bennu samples, then on their way back to earth. He came across Hameroff’s article and began to consider the proposal seriously. Did consciousness come first, before life?

The two soon met and began to collaborate on schemes to test the hypothesis. They would seek quantum oscillations in organic samples from Bennu, and if found, test effects upon them of various anesthetic gases which selectively block consciousness. They brought in Hameroff’s colleague Anirban Bandyopadhyay from the National institute for Material Science in Japan, an expert in detecting quantum oscillations in organic molecules and microtubules. He had discovered fractal-like frequencies in microtubules which he suspected were ‘time crystals’, systems whose dynamics repeated at multiple frequencies. Such quantum devices were proposed as a basis for living systems by U of Arizona mathematician Arthur Winfree in the 1970s. Bandyopadhyay simulated an organic molecule from the Murchison meteorite which came down in 1969 and showed potential time crystal behavior. If quantum oscillations from Bennu organic samples are experimentally shown, and dampened by anesthetics proportional to their clinical potency, the argument can be made that consciousness was the necessary spark at the origin of life. 

The local PBS station show “Arizona Illustrated” did a segment about Hameroff and Lauretta called “Quantum consciousness and the origin of life.” 

Hameroff is also collaborating with Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) and California Institute for Human Science (CIHS) on a clinical study of transcranial ultrasound (TUS) for Alzheimer’s dementia. TUS is megahertz oscillations which resonate disrupted microtubules to reassemble, restore memory, neuronal and brain volume. 
And he will collaborate with UCSD on aging in cerebral organoids, relevant to space medicine as aging is accelerated in astronauts away from earth, possibly mediated by microtubules and treated by ultrasound.

Joining Hameroff at AABC will be longtime TSC conference manager and CCS assistant director Abi Behar-Montefiore. 

The next TSC will be April 6-11, 2026 at Loews Ventana Canyon Resort in the hills above Tucson.