Biography
Professor Sona Nevsimalova has devoted the greatest part of her life to sleep medicine. She has published over 200 scientific papers, 5 monographs and 30 monographic chapters. Her main interest is focused on narcolepsy and childhood sleep disorders. She received many scientific awards (including one from the American Academy of Neurology) and honorary prizes for her research, and participated in the Scientific Committees of the ESRS and WASM. At present, she is the Vice-President of the Czech Sleep Society, and President of the Czech Society of Child Neurology. She has organized several International Congresses, the main organizing effort is now focused on the World Sleep 2017 to be held in Prague.
Research Interest
insomnia
Biography
Dr. Hall’s research bridges two traditionally independent fields, biobehavioral medicine and sleep medicine. Biobehavioral medicine research has made important discoveries regarding the pathways through which psychological, social and environmental factors influence health and functioning. Yet, until recently, this research has focused almost exclusively on factors measured during wakefulness. Similarly, sleep research has not systematically considered the influence of psychosocial or environmental factors on normal sleep or on the pathogenesis and clinical course of primary sleep disorders. Dr. Hall’s biobehavioral sleep medicine research program integrates theoretical concepts and methods from both fields in order to address fundamental questions about the pathways through which psychological and social factors affect sleep and their downstream consequences to health and functioning, with an emphasis on cardiometabolic disease risk. She has evaluated these relationships in diverse populations including healthy and depressed children, adolescents, adults, and elders; caregiver populations; health care workers; women during the menopausal transition; adults with bereavement-related depression; and veterans. Dr. Hall has used an array of study designs including experimental laboratory studies; cross-sectional and longitudinal naturalistic studies; and, most recently, intervention research, with a focus on modeling causal mechanisms. During the course of this research, she has developed innovative methods for enhancing the ecological validity and reliability of sleep studies and the assessment of nocturnal physiology during sleep. She is an internationally-recognized expert on the stress-sleep relationship and the use of heart rate variability as a continuous and non-invasive tool for assessing autonomic tone during sleep and in relation to health and functioning. Currently, Dr. Hall’s two main projects are focused on (1) sleep’s role in the prospective link between major depression and cardiovascular disease, and (2) the impact of psychological stress on the neurobiology of insomnia. She is a widely-sought mentor and educator. A member of the graduate training faculty in the School of Medicine and the Department of Psychology, Dr. Hall has trained and mentored undergraduate, graduate and medical students, post-doctoral fellows, and junior faculty in diverse components of clinical and translational sleep medicine, with an emphasis on the sleep-health relationship.
Research Interest
sleep disorders,insomnia,pediatric sleep medicine
Biography
Sonia Ancoli-Israel, Ph.D. is a Professor Emeritus and Professor of Research in the Departments of Psychiatry and Medicine at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine, Director of the Gillin Sleep and Chronomedicine Research Center, and Director of Education at the Sleep Medicine Center at UCSD. Dr. Ancoli-Israel received her Bachelor’s Degree from the State University of New York, Stony Brook, a Master’s Degree in Psychology from California State University, Long Beach and a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Ancoli-Israel’s expertise is in the field of sleep disorders and sleep research in aging. Her current interests include the longitudinal effect of sleep disorders on aging, the effect of circadian rhythms on sleep, therapeutic interventions for sleep problems in dementia, and fatigue, particularly the relationship between sleep, fatigue and circadian rhythms in cancer and other chronic illnesses. Dr. Ancoli-Israel is Past-President of the Sleep Research Society (SRS), Past-President of the Society for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms, and was on the founding Executive Board of the National Sleep Foundation. She was honored in 2007 with the National Sleep Foundation Life Time Achievement Award and the SRS Mary A. Carskadon Outstanding Educator Award, in 2012 with Society of Behavioral Sleep Medicine Distinguished Career Award and in 2014 with the SRS Distinguished Scientist Award. Dr. Ancoli-Israel is published regularly in medical and psychiatric journals with over 400 publications in the field.
Research Interest
Sleep disorders