Looking Forward to the Next 20 Years of Multidisciplinary and International Collaborative Sleep Research

About
Workshop Report

Sleep is recognised as an important determinant of mental and physical health, quality of life, and a worthy research topic for neuroscientists, molecular biologists, psychologists, sociologists and even mathematicians.

Twenty years ago, the Surrey Sleep Research Centre (SSRC) was created with the aim to deliver multidisciplinary research of leading international quality. The SSRC now consists of 8 Faculty members researching sleep from humans to zebrafish, and from genes to dementia. During the first 20 years of its life, SSRC fostered many national and international collaborations, in part through IAS sponsored workshops, contributed to progress in the field and, through multiple media activities, professional societies, industry contacts, and publications in high impact journals, to the visibility of the University.

The questions now are: What to do next? What are the main research questions, challenges and opportunities for sleep research for the future? How can sleep research deliver impact and innovation? How can we maintain and expand our network of collaborators, and attract new investigators?

The overall aim of this 1.5-day workshop is to address these questions by convening a group of current and future national and international collaborators, many of whom have already expressed their interest in attending, for an event which will focus on the future.

Workshop Themes

Sleep research will no doubt remain multidisciplinary and will make use of novel digital, and machine learning approaches. Sleep research will increasingly move from the sleep lab to the homes of people of all segments of society and be conducted at scale. The questions to be addressed are: What is needed to harness the potential and facilitate the implementations of these new tools? What does the bedroom of the future look like?
Sleep research will focus increasingly on simultaneous assessment of multiple levels, from multi-omics via neurons and synapses to EEG, behaviour and cognition and their dynamics across the sleep-wake cycle. Which analytical approaches are most suitable to summarise these data in an informative manner?
Sleep research will remain intertwined with circadian biology and the impact of environmental factors such as light, temperature and air quality, which are all altered in our built-up, and increasingly warmer world, on sleep and circadian processes will be modelled just as climate change is. The effects of work and school schedules on sleep and circadian biology and outcomes such as fatigue, accidents and heath will need to be modelled and evaluated. How can we best make progress in this area? What kind of data sets do we need? How can we influence policy and medical education?

Speakers

We have composed a list of approximately 50 sleep scientists at various stages of their careers, from former and current PhD students and post-docs to full Professors, from locations ranging from Surrey to Singapore and from academia and industry.