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Professor Neil Gowensmith is a core faculty member at the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Professional Psychology, teaching exclusively in the Forensic Psychology graduate program. In 2014, he created and became the director of the department’s forensic mental health institute, Denver FIRST (The University of Denver’s Forensic Institute for Research, Service, and Training). Denver FIRST now operates a postdoctoral fellowship, an outpatient competency restoration program, and a robust forensic evaluation service. Prof Gowensmith has worked in prisons, jails, courts, community mental health centers, and mental health hospitals throughout his career. From 2006-2012 he served as the Chief of Forensic Services for the State of Hawaii, helping lead Hawaii out of federal oversight and implementing several innovative and evidence-based community forensic policies and programs. He continues to serve as a national expert in forensic mental health, with consultation, research, and practice focusing specifically on outpatient competency restoration, standards for forensic evaluators, conditional release of insanity acquittees, and public forensic mental health systems. He is one of two Special Masters designated by the US District Court (Colorado) to help oversee the transformation of the competency services system in Colorado.

Professor Anthony Pillay is in the Department of Behavioural Medicine at the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine at UKZN & Fort Napier Hospital. He received his post-doctoral training in Maternal & Child Health at Harvard University and has been a Visiting Clinical Fellow at the Boston Children’s Hospital. He is a Visiting Professor at the University of Mauritius, where he also conducts research, and is a Past-President of the Psychological Society of South Africa. He has published over a hundred papers in journals and books around the world, including research into women & children’s mental health, professional psychology training and forensic mental health. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the South African Journal of Psychology, and Associate Editor of the Journal of Child & Adolescent Mental Health.