Matthew Owen is a philosopher who teaches at Yakima Valley College, located in his hometown of Yakima, Washington, just one mile from the rural hospital where three generations of the Owen family have been born. He is also an affiliate faculty member at the Center for Consciousness Science at the University of Michigan. After earning his PhD at the University of Birmingham (England), Matthew was the Elizabeth R. Koch Research Fellow for Tiny Blue Dot Consciousness Studies at Gonzaga University under the supervision of Dr. Christof Koch (Allen Institute for Brain Science) and Dr. Brian Clayton (Gonzaga). Matthew has also taught at Heritage University on the Yakama Nation Reservation; and he was a visiting faculty member at the Biosignal Interaction and Personhood Technology Lab at McGill University during the 2021-2022 academic year. For more professional information about Matthew, please see his CV.

Matthew and his wife Aryn live with their two children, Emma and Peter, their lab Anselm, and four goats (Aristotle, Augustine, Thaddeus, and Galileo) in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, where they enjoy hiking and skiing. Aryn serves as the Eastern Washington Educator and a flight nurse for Airlift Northwest, the medevac  branch of UW Medicine.

Matthew, Aryn, Emma, and Anselm ski touring in the White Pass backcountry with the Goat Rocks in the background.