Dr. Francine Shapiro is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, Director of the EMDR Institute, and founder of the EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Programs (www.emdrhap.org), a non-profit organization that coordinates disaster response and pro bono trainings worldwide. As the originator and developer of EMDR, she is a recipient of the International Sigmund Freud Award of the City of Vienna for distinguished contribution to psychotherapy, the American Psychological Association Trauma Psychology Division Award for Outstanding Contributions to Practice in Trauma Psychology, and the Distinguished Scientific Achievement in Psychology Award, from the California Psychological Association. As a result of her development of EMDR therapy, thousands of clinicians have treated millions of people during the past 20 years. National EMDR Associations worldwide are dedicated to the alleviation of suffering and cooperate to bring relief after both natural and manmade disasters from 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, to earthquakes and tsunamis in Asia, from plane crashes in Europe and wildfires in Australia, to treating the earthquake victims in Haiti and the coal miners in Chile.
Dr. Shapiro was designated as one of the "Cadre of Experts" of the American Psychological Association & Canadian Psychological Association Joint Initiative on Ethnopolitical Warfare, and has served as advisor to a wide variety of trauma treatment and outreach organizations and journals. She has been an invited speaker at psychology conferences worldwide and has written and co-authored more than 60 articles, chapters, and books about EMDR, including EMDR: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing: Basic Principles, Protocols and Procedures (Guilford Press), EMDR: The Breakthrough Therapy for Overcoming Anxiety, Stress and Trauma (Basic Books), EMDR as an Integrative Psychotherapy Approach: Experts of Diverse Orientations Explore the Paradigm Prism (American Psychological Association Books), and Handbook of EMDR and Family Therapy Processes (Wiley).