Jan M. A. van der Valk is a biologist (MSc, University of Leuven), ethnobotanist, and anthropologist (MSc, PhD, University of Kent, Canterbury) who has been studying Sowa Rigpa with his teacher, Gen. Pasang Yonten Arya, since 2012. He is also a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna, in the Austrian Science Fund project “Potent Substances in Sowa Rigpa and Buddhist Ritual.”