Dr. Corrado Garbazza, MD is a psychiatrist specialized in sleep and circadian medicine and research, working at the Centre for Chronobiology of the University of Basel, Switzerland. After medical studies in Italy and Germany, he obtained a doctorate from the Competence Center of Sleep Medicine of the Charité Medical University, Berlin. After moving to Switzerland, he entered a PhD program at the University of Basel, Centre for Chronobiology, under the supervision of Prof. Christian Cajochen. Since 2012, Dr Garbazza has specialized on the management of circadian rhythm sleep-wake disorders and the chronotherapy of affective disorders, with a focus on the bright light treatment of perinatal depression.
Dr. Renske Lok studied Medical Biology and obtained her PhD from the University of Groningen, Department of Chronobiology, in which she investigated effects of light on human alertness. She is currently a postdoctoral research at Stanford University, where her research interests include the effects of light on psychological and physical performance, thermoregulation and sleep.
Dr. John Hanifin is an Associate Director of the Thomas Jefferson University Light Research Program. In addition to serving as Project Manager for NIH and NASA sponsored research studies, he has recently been awarded a Department of Energy grant examining how solid-state lighting can impact human physiology. Using the techniques of radioimmunoassay, performance testing and photobiology, Dr. Hanifin has successfully completed empirical studies on polychromatic light mixtures of blue light for circadian, neuroendocrine and neurobehavioral effects in humans.
Dr. Ali Amidi is an Associate Professor in Neuroscience and Psychology at the Department of Psychology & Behavioural Sciences, Aarhus University. He completed his PhD in Neuroscience and Health Psychology from Aarhus University and is a leading member of the Unit for Psycho-Oncology and Health Psychology. His research focuses on the onset, development, prevention, and treatment of various cancer-related symptoms, including cognitive impairment, circadian disruption, fatigue, and sleep disturbances. He is the Group Leader of the Sleep and Circadian Psychology Research Group at Aarhus University and serves as the Principal Investigator on several funded research projects exploring the interactions between psychological outcomes, sleep, chronobiology, and light in both clinical and healthy populations. He was a visiting research fellow at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, in the sections for Medical Social Sciences and the Center for Sleep and Circadian Medicine (2017–2018).
Dr. Beatriz Bano-Otalora is a Lecturer in Physiology and member of the Centre for Biological Timing at the University of Manchester. She completed her PhD in Circadian Physiology at the University of Murcia (Spain). She then moved to the UK as a postdoc to continue her research on the neurobiology of circadian clocks, and investigate the impact of daytime lighting conditions on circadian rhythmicity using novel diurnal animal models. In October 2022, she got a Lectureship at the University of Manchester where she is establishing her independent group focused on understanding the contribution of early-life light environment to development and function of the circadian clock in diurnal animals.
Dr. Rebecca Cox is a clinical psychologist and the director of the Sleep, Circadian Rhythms, and Psychopathology Laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis. She completed her PhD in clinical psychology at Vanderbilt University and a postdoctoral fellowship in sleep and circadian rhythms at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research examines the role of sleep and circadian rhythm disruption in anxiety-related disorders and the potential of sleep and circadian medicine (e.g., light therapy) as novel treatment approaches.
Dr. Louise Ince completed her PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Manchester, where she studied the influence of circadian rhythms in glucocorticoid signaling on inflammatory responses in the lung. As a postdoc, she moved to the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich and the University of Geneva to research biological rhythms in adaptive immune function. Now a Research Scientist at The University of Texas at Austin, Louise is using her expertise in rhythmic immunology to investigate how changes in neuroimmune rhythms contribute to cognitive decline in aging and dementia.
Website: https://lab.ince.live
Dr. Manuel Spitschan is the Rudolf Mössbauer Assistant Professor of Chronobiology & Health at Technical University of Munich and Max Planck Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. After undergraduate studies in psychology at the University of St Andrews (2009-2012), he completed his PhD on melanopsin sensitivity in the human visual system at the University of Pennsylvania (2012-2016). Following a post-doc at Stanford University (2016-2017), he joined the University of Oxford on a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship, through which he collaborated with the Centre for Chronobiology in Basel (2017-2021). He is the current Speaker of the Steering Committee of the Daylight Academy, Chair of the Joint Technical Committee 20 of the CIE and past Chair of the Optica (formerly OSA) Color Technical Group.
Delainey Wescott, MS is finishing her PhD in Clinical and Biological/Health Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh and is currently completing her clinical internship at Western Psychiatric Hospital. Delainey’s research focuses on disrupted sleep and circadian rhythms as mechanisms and treatment targets in mood disorders with a focus on adolescence and young adulthood.
Dr. Lisa Wu is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Reykjavik University and in the Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences at Aarhus University. She is also a co-founder of the Sleep and Circadian Psychology Research Group at Aarhus University and Scientific Coordinator for Reykjavik University's participation in the European University Alliance NeurotechEU (the European University of Brain and Technology). Trained as a clinical psychologist and neuropsychologist, her research has focused on studying the side- and late effects of cancer and its treatment, and intervention development. This work led her to research circadian rhythms in cancer patients in order to better understand how disruptions in circadian rhythms might potentially drive late effects, and also to investigate the therapeutic properties of light therapy on side- and late-effects of cancer and its treatment.