IRVA Annual Conference 2026
Dayton, Ohio

Speaker Bios

 

 

 

Speaker Bios

Learn more about our presenters, lecturers, instructors, and moderators.

Dale Graff

Dale Graff

Former Director of Stargate the Government Remote Viewing Program at Ft. Meade

Since retirement, Dale has served for many years on IRVA's board and continues to be involved in IRVA activities and research projects. He was the former director of Stargate, the government’s RV unit at FT. Meade, Maryland, in its later years of existence and was the creator of the code name Stargate. Since retirement, he has facilitated Psi-RV-dream workshops, published two books. He performs Psi experiments with a focus on Psi dreams and the lucid dream state. His professional background includes ten years with aerospace companies, some with the Gemini space program, and thirty years in the Intelligence Community with the Foreign Technology (FTD) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton Ohio and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Washington, D.C.

Stephen K. Hayes

Stephen K. Hayes

Kasumi-An To-Shin Do Hombu Dojo

Paul Smith

Paul Smith

Remote Viewing expert & Military Stargate program Officer

Dr. Paul H. Smith is a founding member and former president of IRVA. He served in the U.S. military’s Star Gate remote viewing program and has authored books on remote viewing. Paul is a frequent interview guest on Coast to Coast AM and many other radio and podcast shows, as well as documentaries and television shows for A&E, the History Channel, the Travel Channel, Discovery, CBS Sunday Morning, “Joe Rogan Questions Everything,” “The Lowe Files,” including Caroline Cory’s documentary “Superhuman: The Invisible Made Visible” and “Cosmosis: UFOs & a New Reality.” He continues to work as a trainer, consultant, and remote viewer.

Hakim Isler

Hakim Isler

Executive Director & Founding Steward Psi Games International

Hakim Isler, widely known as “The Black MacGyver,” is a combat veteran, martial arts master, and television personality. A former U.S. Army Psychological Operations Sergeant with SERE training, he holds a sixth-degree black belt in To-Shin Do and is the creator of Psi Games, a competition fusing strategy, intuition, and mental discipline. He has appeared on Naked & Afraid, Kicking & Screaming, and Race to Survive: Alaska.

Lyn Buchanan

Lyn Buchanan

IRVA Director

A retired Sergeant First Class in the United State Army, Lyn was a Remote Viewer, Database Manager, Property Book Officer, and Trainer in the US Army Remote Viewing Unit from 1984 to 1992. A founder and former IRVA director, he is the author of The Seventh Sense and currently executive director of Problems>Solutions>Innovations, a Controlled Remote Viewing training school, and founder of the Assigned Witness Program, a non-profit Controlled Remote Viewing applications and research corporation based in New Mexico.

Angela Ford

Angela Dellafiora Ford is a former U.S. Intelligence Community professional and one of the best-known remote viewers associated with the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Star Gate Program. She served as a remote viewer from 1986 to 1995, applying remote viewing and psi-based methods within government intelligence contexts during the later years of the U.S. government’s classified psychic research programs. Ford worked for more than 32 years in the Intelligence Community in Washington, D.C., and holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her remote viewing work has been publicly associated with intelligence, law-enforcement, and operational cases, including accounts involving fugitive location and counterintelligence-related targets. Since retiring from government service, Ford has continued to be involved in consciousness and psi research, education, and consulting. She has worked with the Laboratories of Fundamental Research and has taught remote viewing-related material, contributing to the preservation and public understanding of the Star Gate remote viewing legacy.

Jenifer Prather

Jenifer Prather

IRVA Director

Jenifer is a long time remote viewer and IRVA member. She is now acting co-director for the IRVA Research Unit (IRU). She is a Clinical Researcher with 20+ years experience n the management of single/multi-site Phase 1-4 sponsored and Investigator-Initiated human subject clinical trials. Active in: C-Level Suite communication/reports/scheduling, KOL engagement, study coordination, data management, contract negotiations, regulatory oversight and submissions, quality assurance, clinical research compliance, auditing, monitoring, multi-site management, adverse event reporting, gap analysis, technical writing, writing standard operating procedures, drafting training manuals, clinical trial education/training, networking with support groups, and patient recruitment/retention.

Teresa Fendley

Teresa Fendley

IRVA Director

T.W. (Teresa) Fendley is an award-winning speculative fiction author. She holds a BA in journalism and worked 25+ years as a reporter/editor and in corporate communications. Since 2009, she has enjoyed making ARV predictions for horse racing, sports, and stock trades with the Applied Precognition Project (APP). She managed a weekly horse racing group and served as APP webmaster. Teresa participates in ARV studies as a viewer and researcher.

Luciano Arruda

Luciano Arruda

IRVA President

Luciano is a software professional with 20 years of experience in the Globalization Industry having held leading positions in Operations, Product & Marketing in large global companies including Adobe, Google, Uber and fast-growing startups. He's the Director of Globalization Programs at Automation Anywhere managing global scalable programs and supporting growth initiatives in Asia Pacific, Japan, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East. He is fluent in Brazilian Portuguese, Latin American Spanish and English and is a citizen of Brazil, Italy, and the United States. Luciano is leading IRVA's New International Committee.

Bridget Gibbs

Bridget Gibbs

IRVA Vice President

Bridget is a Human Resource professional with over 20 years’ experience in learning and development, project management, organizational design, and change management. She holds a BA in Communication Management from the University of Dayton. Her interest in Remote Viewing began four years ago when she took her first RV class with Debra Lynne Katz.

Cindy Miller

Cindy Miller

IRVA Treasurer

Cindy's interests include the broader topic of anomalous and non-local phenomena of which Remote Viewing may be a modality. She holds a bachelors and masters degree in mathematics, doctorate in engineering management and systems engineering, completed over 50 hours of graduate work in international relations, and was President and Chief Operating Officer of an internationally focused non-profit organization. Her scientific and analytical experience includes contributing to projects and research in sensor systems, high-energy physics, dynamical systems, modeling and simulation, quantum theory, and artificial intelligence.

Chase McCarthy

Chase McCarthy

Speaker Title or Topic

Chase is the creator of social-rv.com, and an Applied AI Engineer with 8 years of experience working in Big Tech and VC-backed startups in the San Francisco Bay Area. After winning the psionics track of the SF UAP Hackathon earlier this year, Social RV has become one of the largest and most advanced platforms for public psi experimentation.

Henry Gilroy

Henry Gilroy

Speaker Title or Topic

Debra Lynne Katz

Debra Lynne Katz

IRVA President 2022-2025

Dr. Debra Lynne Katz is President of IRVA, holds a PhD in Psychology, and is a renowned author in the fields of clairvoyance, psychic development, and remote viewing. She is a professional remote viewer, clairvoyant, medium, energy healer, and parapsychological researcher.

Paul Thompson

Paul Thompson

Independent Researcher

Paul Thompson is an independent researcher focused on the intersection of remote viewing and financial markets with the goal of developing reliable forecasting. His professional background includes corporate banking and economic development and informs an applied and operational approach.

Shane Stone

Shane Stone

Manager of Applied Precognition Project Horse Racing Group and "Talk With" webinar host

Shane is an electrical engineer with a background in digital signal processing and communication systems, bringing a rigorous technical perspective to the study and application of remote viewing. His current research interests include capital allocation using remote‑viewing‑based predictions, direct viewing of multi‑outcome events, and error‑detection and correction protocols inspired by modern communication theory. He was first introduced to remote viewing while working in the personal development field, collaborating with intuitives and practitioners across multiple modalities. Since then, he has focused on building principled, data‑driven methodologies for applied precognition, particularly in domains such as horse racing, where probabilistic outcomes and multi‑choice structures create unique tasking challenges. Shane has published scientific research on laser light scattering for fractal measurement and on the fabrication of curved solar panels designed to reduce aerodynamic drag.