A*STAR Institute for Human Development and Potential — Singapore

Research Scientist &
Principal Investigator

I build mental-health interventions that are scalable enough to reach people who need them, and rigorous enough to tell us why they work — through multi-site trials, mechanistic designs, and open research infrastructure.

NMRC-funded PI Published in Nature Human Behaviour 37-site trial, N = 2,239
See the research Use SOMA Publications
Portrait of Alessandro Sparacio

About

Stress & Mental Health

Multi-Site Trials

Open Infrastructure

Equity by Design

I am a Research Scientist and Principal Investigator at A*STAR's Institute for Human Development and Potential in Singapore. My work asks a deceptively simple question: which low-cost mental-health interventions actually work, for whom, and through what mechanism?

I led a 37-site study of self-administered mindfulness with 2,239 participants, published in Nature Human Behaviour and selected as the issue cover article.

That study also exposed a problem the field had been living with: without standardised materials and properly matched control conditions, mindfulness results are difficult to compare and harder to replicate. So I built SOMA — an open stimulus library designed to fix exactly that, now freely available for any research group to use.

My doctoral research at Université Grenoble Alpes and Swansea University produced two meta-analyses on stress regulation, the second as a Registered Report. I earned my Ph.D. with distinction, cited in part for open science practice. Since joining A*STAR I have moved into clinical trials and digital biomarkers, including a fully decentralised pilot using heart-rate variability to measure stress remotely.

Alongside the research, I work on reproducibility infrastructure for the region — because tools and standards outlast any individual study.

Research Programme

One question, pursued at three levels: run trials large and rigorous enough to trust, build the shared materials that make those trials comparable, and make sure both reach populations that mindfulness research has historically left out.

Recruitment poster for the REFORM trial: Building Resilience Across Socioeconomic Contexts — actively recruiting.
NMRC OF-YIRG Principal Investigator Recruiting
REFORM

Building Resilience Across Socioeconomic Contexts: A Multi-Site Study on Self-Administered Mindfulness Interventions

Most mindfulness trials test whether a practice works. REFORM asks a harder question: does the structure of the practice matter — formal seated sessions versus informal practice woven into daily life — and does that answer change across socioeconomic contexts? The trial runs across multiple international sites using the SOMA library, so every site delivers materially identical materials.

Multi-siteInternational
2025–2028Award period
Pre-registeredOpen protocol
Read the protocol Interested in hosting a site?

SOMA

A free, open library of mindfulness scripts and audio, each one paired with a validated, structurally matched active control.

The SOMA library: six attitudinal themes connect through a central mindfulness practice to open scripts, audio files and matched session pairs.
Open research infrastructure
Free to use CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Pre-registered validation

Standardized Open-source Mindfulness Architecture

If you run mindfulness studies, you know the two hardest problems: everyone builds their own materials, and almost nobody has a control condition that holds attention constant without smuggling mindfulness back in. SOMA gives you both halves of the experiment. Every mindfulness script comes with a structurally matched active control: same length, same narrator, same pacing, a different object of attention. Use the mindfulness sessions, the controls, or the matched pair.

It was built for participants usually excluded from this research: Grade 5–6 reading level, no quiet room required, no prior experience assumed, secular throughout. Every asset carries a code and a version, so different labs can run, and cite, exactly the same intervention.

88Open assets
16Matched pairs
6Thematic families
360Validation N
Explore the library Preprint OSF repository

How the library is built

Each session is a short thematic introduction, a neutral transition and a ten-minute practice, about twelve minutes in total.

Six thematic families: Being, Curiosity, Patience, Acceptance, Letting Go and Gentleness.
01 · THEMES

Six attitudinal themes

Being, Curiosity, Patience, Acceptance, Letting Go and Gentleness. Each has a matched control theme that sets an analytical rather than experiential stance.

Formal seated practice and informal practices woven into daily activities such as walking, eating and handwashing.
02 · PRACTICES

Formal and informal practice

Sixteen practices: eight seated sessions and eight woven into everyday activities like walking, eating or handwashing. None of them needs a quiet room.

Attentional Object Shift: the mindfulness and active-control versions share the same structure but direct attention to different objects.
03 · CONTROLS

Attentional Object Shift

The control keeps the structure and changes only what attention is directed to. It's the design principle behind every matched pair.

Inside a matched pair

Verbatim lines from Pair A, the first practice in the Being family.

MINDFULNESS

Opening the Senses

SOMA-M-T01A-P01
“Do not search for anything special. Just gently notice what you see.”
ACTIVE CONTROL

Environmental Survey

SOMA-C-T01A-P01
“Begin to conduct a visual inventory of the room. Move your eyes to identify specific colors, distinct shapes, and solid objects.”

Same visual targets, different stance. One receives the experience; the other analyses it.

SUPPORTEDDistinct experiential profilesMindfulness scored higher on state mindfulness, the control higher on analytical engagement (pre-registered RCT, N = 360).
SUPPORTEDComparable across education levelsParticipants with and without a university degree reported comparable experiences.
OPEN TARGETCredibility gap, reported openlyThe control was rated less credible after the exercise, although above the scale midpoint. It's a documented target for refinement.
The SOMA Use Registry: tracking planned and ongoing studies that use SOMA modules.
Now open

Using SOMA? Register your study.

Downloads are anonymous and citations arrive years later. The registry lets us connect teams working in the same language or on the same pairing, and tell you when a script is revised. It is not an approval step: SOMA stays open.

Optional2–3 minutesNo participant dataNothing public without opt-in
Register a study

Selected Publications

Three papers that trace the arc: establish the effect, build better tools, test it in the real world.

Nature Human Behaviour2024Cover article

Self-administered mindfulness interventions reduce stress in a large, randomized controlled multi-site study

Mindfulness apps are everywhere, but the evidence base was thin and fragmented. We tested four brief exercises across 37 sites and 2,239 participants — the largest study of its kind — to establish what a short, self-guided practice actually does to stress.

View publication
JMIR Mental Health2025Pilot RCT

Feasibility and acceptability of a smartphone-delivered mindfulness intervention for stress reduction in adult Singaporeans

A fully decentralised pilot: participants used their own phones, at home, with no researcher contact. It tested whether remote delivery and remote stress measurement could work at all — the groundwork for running trials at scale.

View publication
Collabra: Psychology2023Meta-analysis

Stress regulation via being in nature and social support in adults: A meta-analysis

Two of the most commonly recommended ways to manage stress, assessed against the full published literature — including how much of the apparent effect survives correction for publication bias.

View publication
Download full CV ORCID OSF

Talks & Media

Where this work is being presented, and where it has been covered.

Nov26–28, 2026
Upcoming

Presenting SOMA at SASP 2026

Christchurch, New Zealand

Introducing the SOMA library to the social and personality psychology community: why matched active controls matter, and how to use the resource in your own work.

Nov6–7, 2026
Upcoming

Hands-on SOMA workshop — Neuroethics Asia 2026

NUS Centre for Biomedical Ethics, Singapore

A practical session on equity-by-design in mental-health research: what it takes to build materials that are genuinely usable by populations this research usually excludes — and how to work with the library directly.

Conference website
Oct13, 2026
Upcoming

Should AI simulate patients and the public? Can it help citizen science?

PPIE and AI: A Capacity-Building Day · NUS Centre for Biomedical Ethics, Singapore

Afternoon session with Assoc. Prof. Sebastian Porsdam Mann, part of a capacity-building day on Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) in health research and how AI is changing research participation.

Programme & registration
Oct7, 2026
Upcoming

SOMA: An open-source, equity-engineered stimulus library for collaborative mindfulness research

Big Team Science Conference 2026 (online)

Presenting SOMA to the big team science community: shared, coded materials so that many labs can run, and cite, exactly the same intervention.

Register (free, optional fee)
May26, 2026

Advancing mindfulness research: open tools, multi-site designs, methodological rigour

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan

An invited seminar introducing SOMA and the REFORM trial, and the start of an ongoing Italian collaboration.

Oct2, 2025

Workshop — The replication crisis in science and medicine

NUS Medicine, Singapore

Co-delivered workshop on reproducibility and what a stronger research culture in Singapore would require.

Event page
Aug30, 2025

Brief mindfulness for real-life stress relief

Manchester Mindfulness Festival (online)

Taking the multi-site findings to a practitioner and public audience.

Event page

Quickfire pitch at the Global Young Scientists Summit (GYSS) 2025, Singapore.

A*STAR Research on the multi-site mindfulness study and what it means for accessible stress support.

Read the article

Interview in La Repubblica (Italian) on the study's findings and their practical implications.

Read the article

Medical Xpress coverage of the research on self-administered mindfulness and stress.

Read the article

Breathing Pacer

An interactive timer for guided, slow breathing. Controlled breathing is associated with short-term reductions in stress and arousal in experimental studies, although effects vary across individuals and contexts. Use the timer to set a comfortable breathing rhythm and session length.

Press start
0:00

Further reading

Balban, M. Y. et al. (2023). Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal. Cell Reports Medicine, 4(1), 100895. In this trial the clearest benefits were observed for cyclic sighing; box breathing was one of several patterns tested. doi:10.1016/j.xcrm.2022.100895
Vierra, J., Boonla, O., & Prasertsri, P. (2022). Effects of sleep deprivation and 4-7-8 breathing control on heart rate variability, blood pressure, blood glucose, and endothelial function in healthy young adults. Physiological Reports, 10(13), e15389. doi:10.14814/phy2.15389
Aktaş, G. K. & İlgin, V. E. (2023). The effect of deep breathing exercise and 4-7-8 breathing techniques applied to patients after bariatric surgery on anxiety and quality of life. Obesity Surgery, 33(3), 920–929. doi:10.1007/s11695-022-06405-1