Link Swanson, PhD

Education

2022 PhD, Cognitive Science, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Dissertation: Psychedelic Vision

2019 MA, Philosophy, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Masters Thesis: Making Sense of Hallucination

2006 BASc, Psychology, University of Minnesota Duluth
Honors Thesis: Psychedelic Drug Use and Creative Thinking

2006 BA, Philosophy, University of Minnesota Duluth
Honors Thesis: Panpsychism in Philosophy of Mind

Employment

Chainlink Labs

Aug 2025 - current: Senior Software Engineer
Maintainer on production tooling repositories in Python (primary), Go, and Typescript.

Nov 2023 - Aug 2025: Senior Devops Engineer
Responsible for creating end-to-end deployment workflows that manage the creation of smart contracts on 60+ blockchains, configurations across hundreds of Chainlink nodes run by independent operators, and automated integration with internal systems including GitHub, Jira, Slack, and compliance databases.

Jan 2022 - Nov 2023: Blockchain Systems Administrator
Responsible for deploying production Chainlink Data Feeds for customers on blockchains and Chainlink nodes.

University of Minnesota

Apr 2014 - Jan 2022: Senior Devops Engineer
Maintainer on web applications and deployment pipelines for academic Library research systems.

Apr 2012 - Apr 2014: Web Developer & Linux Sysadmin
Responsible for a fleet of Linux servers. Completed physical-to-virtual migrations and built deployment workflow pipelines.

Logistics Services, Inc.

Aug 2008 - Apr 2012: Web Developer & Systems Administrator
Developed and maintained business-critical web applications and the infrastructure they run on.

Woodburn Group, Inc.

Nov 2006 - Aug 2008 Web Developer & Business Intelligence Consultant
Consultant for scaling and deployment of Business Intelligence software at Fortune 500 companies. Developed the firm’s company website.

Academic areas of specialization

cognitive science, perception, psychedelic drugs

Academic areas of competence

philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, neuroscience

Publications

Schallmo, M.-P., Jungers, S., Varghese, R., Cullen, K., Evans, M., Nielson, J., & Swanson, L. (2025). Stronger visual surround suppression under psilocybin: A psychophysical and EEG pilot study. Journal of Vision, 25, 2091. https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.25.9.2091

Swanson, L. R. (2024). Psychedelic visuals in context. In C. Letheby & P. Gerrans (Eds.), Philosophical perspectives on psychedelic psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192898371.003.0006

Swanson, L. R., Jungers, S., Varghese, R., Cullen, K. R., Evans, M. D., Nielson, J. L., & Schallmo, M.-P. (2024). Enhanced visual contrast suppression during peak psilocybin effects: Psychophysical results from a pilot randomized controlled trial. Journal of Vision, 24(12), 5–5. https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.24.12.5

Swanson, L. (2019). Blockchain education for communities. In S. Hirsh & S. Alman (Eds.), Blockchain (library futures series, book 3) (pp. 87–90).

Swanson, LR (2018). Unifying Theories of Psychedelic Drug Effects. Frontiers in Pharmacology, 9, 172. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2018.00172

Swanson, LR (2018a). Unlearning to See: Linking the Perceptual and Clinical Effects of Psychedelic Drugs [Abstract]. in Rogers, T. T.; Rau, M.; Kalish, C. W. & Zhu, X. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 2018, 2972.

Swanson, LR (2016). The Predictive Processing Paradigm Has Roots in Kant. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. 10:79. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2016.00079

Technical skills

Programming languages: Python, Go, Typescript, Matlab, PHP, HTML, CSS, JSON, YAML, XML

Software engineering: automation, application development, command-line interfaces, blockchain, smart contracts, Ethereum, git, web interfaces, software packaging, DevOps, containerization, cloud architecture, web servers, Linux systems administration

Data collection and analysis: extract-transform-load (ETL), statistical analysis, plotting, pandas, matplotlib, EEG acquisition, EEG signal processing, BrainFlow, EEGLAB, ERPLAB, psychophysics stimuli, adaptive staircases, Psychopy, psychometric rating scales

Invited talks

2023 May “Psychedelic Drugs: Perception and Psychodynamics” New Center for Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles, California

2020 Dec “Psychedelics and mental context: Phenomenology and neural computation”
Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Louisville, Kentucky

2018 Oct “My Non-Ideal Self” (with Kathryn Swanson, PhD, JD)
Selfless Minds Workshop, Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Frankfurt, Germany

2018 Oct “Predictive Brains on Psychedelic Drugs”
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madison

2018 Aug “Cognitive barriers to understanding blockchain technologies” Blockchain National Forum, San Jose, CA

Conference presentations

2019 Mar “Belief, Expectation, and Psychedelic Drug Mechanisms”
Community Symposium, Psychedelic Society of Minneapolis, Hamline University, St. Paul, MN

2018 Jul “Unlearning to See: Linking the Perceptual and Clinical Effects of Psychedelic Drugs”
The 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Madison, WI

2018 Apr “Unifying Theories of Psychedelic Drug Effects”
The Science of Consciousness, Tucson, AZ

2017 Jun “Theoretical Models of Psychedelic Drug Effects”
Breaking Convention, University of Greenwich, London, UK

2017 Apr “Bayesian Neuroscience of Psychedelic Drugs” Spring Research Day, Center for Cognitive Sciences, University of Minnesota

2017 Jan “Predictive Processing Models of Psychedelic Effects”
The Driftless Psychedelic Therapy Symposium, Viroqua, WI

2016 Jul “Panpsychism Has No Future in Philosophy of Mind”
Matter, Mind, and Consciousness, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

2016 Sep “User Interfaces and the Epistemology of the new Computational Cognitive Revolution”
Informatics Institute and the Institute for Advanced Study, University of Minnesota

2016 Apr “The Philosophical Roots of Predictive Coding Theory”
Spring Research Day, Center for Cognitive Sciences, University of Minnesota

Departmental talks

2017 May “Hallucination and Perception: A Delicate Balance of Top-down and Bottom-up in the Predictive Brain”
Cognitive Science Colloquium Series, University of Minnesota

2016 Apr “What Are the Philosophical Roots of Predictive Coding Theory?”
Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota

2016 Mar “The Philosophical Roots of Predictive Coding Theory”
Department of Philosophy, University of Minnesota

Grants & fellowships

2016 “Where is the Human In the Data?”
University of Minnesota Informatics Institute Graduate Summer Fellowship
$5,000 (Office of the Vice President for Research)

2004 UROP Grant, Psychology, University of Minnesota Duluth
$1,500 (Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program)

2002 UROP Grant, Psychology, University of Minnesota Duluth
$1,500 (Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program)

Teaching experience

2005 Teaching Assistant, Intro to Philosophy, University of Minnesota Duluth

2005 Teaching Assistant, Transpersonal Psychology (online), University of Minnesota Duluth

2004 Teaching Assistant, Abnormal Psychology (online), University of Minnesota Duluth

Editorial work

2025 Invited Reviewer, Current Neuropharmacology

2019 Invited Reviewer, The 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Montreal, Canada

2018 Invited Reviewer, Selfless Minds Workshop, Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Frankfurt, Germany

Contributions to Open Souce software

2019 PsychoPy 2012 - 2018 Drupal CMS