Barun Maek has a collaborative partnership with Eastern Aligned Education and Research Corporation.
Eunji Spitler, President of Barun Maek Research Society founded the Eastern Aligned Education and Research Corporation with Co founders who had the same mission. The company’s mission is to promote understanding of biopsychosocial mechanisms of holistic health to educational institutions in America, bringing accurate and timely integrative health information to best serve the mental health needs for the population that needs it most. The Eastern Aligned Education and Research Corporation has a partnership with Northern Medical Research Foundation in Upstate New York as well. Northern Medical Research Foundation said “We are dedicated to transforming the future of healthcare by focusing on the root causes of illness – not just managing symptoms. Our mission is to develop and support research that restores human health, blending the rigor of modern science with the wisdom of traditional healing practices.”
The following is the Co-founders’ and team member’s voice. Here are two new figures with Dillon, our executive director. Dr. Liang completed a PHD course in Havard medical school. Ian Liu finished MS program at Brown University and is preparing for a PHD course.
Vice President, Dr. David Liang who is focused on Psychiatry Mental Health, Research Models
“I first met Mr. and Mrs. Spitler in an online meeting where they introduced their unified system for understanding human health and behavior. Their passion for developing a more informed way of looking at society and human behavior—grounded in the ancient wisdom of the five elements—resonated deeply with me. That meeting became the starting point of the Eastern-Aligned Education and Research Corporation, whose mission is to help restore harmony and timeless values in our society, or in the words of the ancients, to “cultivate virtue throughout the world. (修德於天下 Essentials for Further Advancement)” The Spitlers’ success in founding and sustaining the Barun Maek Society in Korea for eighteen years stands as strong evidence that they are meant for this challenge. I believe our mission of building a society of harmony will also succeed in the United States.”
Chief Financial Officer, Dillon Spitler
“My career goals are to bridge the gap between Eastern and Western understanding of health applications, education and administration As a business owner and executive director for a non profit I have learned the strength of western institutions when it comes to formalization of knowledge. From the east I have learned the flexibility of non rigid thought. Examples such as chess versus go as an illustration of the immense challenges of dealing with a fundamentally different set of rules. My hope is that I can use the strengths of both systems to formalize great health and education products for the future well being of society.”
Primary Investigator, Ian Liu
“Focus: biomedical data science, eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI), spatial multi-omics, medical imaging, graph neural networks (GNN) My career focuses on illuminating the invisible forces shaping human health by bridging rigorous computational science with the intuitive wisdom of the East. My path to research began in the classical Chinese dance studio, where I was trained to seek Yun: the internal intent that bestows form meaning. I've now applied this idea of looking beyond the surface as a biostatistician and data scientist, viewing data not merely as numbers, but as a language to uncover underlying mechanisms. Just as I learned that a dance movement is empty without its emotional root, I believe that current healthcare models often overlook the essence of well-being by focusing solely on symptoms. At Eastern Aligned, I am committed to harmonizing these worlds, using algorithms and data to validate, formalize, then implement holistic health principles. Currently, I am pursuing my M.S. in Biostatistics at Brown University, developing interpretable deep learning models to bridge the gap between histology images and spatial transcriptomics. Next year in February, I will be delivering my work on interpretable graph neural networks for the brain cortical surface at SPIE Medical Imaging 2026 as an oral presentation.”
Korean