About us

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 Our mission is to use a data-driven and scientific approach to illuminate the problems that ail our society and develop solutions to help us collectively deal with these problems. 

We were motivated to launch the Zeitgeber Foundation as a result of one of the founders’, Dr. Akshat Vyas’, personal experiences with mental illness and the impact the illness continues to have on him and the other founders. Our story goes back to 2014 when Akshat was a professor of Neuroscience and Psychology. He learned firsthand about sexual assaults in a college he was affiliated with. He tried to understand the prevalence of sexual violence on campus, and what the college was doing to combat it. He faced tremendous resistance, pushback, and retaliation. Around this time, perhaps triggered by the stress, he experienced his first episode of Bipolar Mania. His decision to fight sexual violence, coupled with his mental illness led to dire consequences. Almost in the blink of an eyelid, he went from being a Neuroscientist, a Psychologist, and a professor to being fired, arrested, going broke, and sitting in federal detention, facing deportation. The sudden unraveling of his promising life and career was similarly baffling and distressing for his family and friends. Unwittingly, Akshat and those of us trying to help him had found ourselves at the confluence of two silent epidemics facing our society: Sexual Violence, and Mental illness. The irony is that he is one of the lucky ones. Akshat has the education, background, and people that care very deeply for him. These enabled Akshat to successfully recover from the jolt and manage his condition. In the process, we learned that Akshat’s hopeful story is the exception rather than the rule for most people who suffer similar conditions. We learned that as much as we like to admire the stories of people who manage to “claw back up after getting knocked down”, there are roadblocks at every step that actively prevent people from successfully rehabilitating after facing adversity. We launched the Zeitgeber Foundation to do our part in changing that.