PERFORM Colloquium: Sleep and Circadian Factors in Health and Disease

2021-01-12

Introduction:

Dr. Chellappa's talk focuses on three research themes involving sleep and circadian mechanisms/interventions to promote human health and well-being, which are:

• Sleep, circadian rhythms and aging;
  
• Sleep, circadian rhythms, aging and light sensitivity;
• Sleep, circadian rhythms and ocular disease.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Chellappa is a MD, PhD (University of Basel, Switzerland), and Scientific Collaborator at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Chellappa´s work has shown that sleep and circadian rhythms differentially affect mood, cognition and brain activity in a variety of human populations, including healthy young and older adults, shift workers, patients with depression, patients with ocular diseases and patients with neurodegeneration. Her work combines multimodal imaging approaches, such as Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, high-density EEG and functional magnetic resonance imaging, to assess how sleep and circadian rhythms affect brain activity underlying mood and cognitive control. Her work also includes sleep/circadian interventions to help improve mood, health and well-being using targeted light exposure and, more recently targeted nutritional interventions (meal timing) to improve metabolic function in humans.

Dr. Chellappa has authored ~50 published papers (h-factor: 23) in prestigious journals including Science, Nature Communications, PNAS, JAMA Ophthalmology, among others, and has successfully acquired funding (e.g. the AXA Foundation, Swiss Office for Public Health, Brigham Research Institute).