WESTCHESTER, Ill.Frank A. Scheer, PhD, was recently named the recipient of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s (AASM) Young Investigator Award for 2007.


“This year’s Young Investigator Award recognizes the efforts of Dr. Scheer in determining the potential harmful effects of a varying sleep schedule on a person’s appetite and metabolism, which could very well be relevant to shift workers,” said Alejandro D. Chediak, MD, new AASM president. “I congratulate Dr. Scheer on this well-deserved honor, and am confident that, as we continue to make strides on our efforts to learn more and more about the inner-workings of sleep and the various sleep disorders that exist, he will continue to do great things on behalf of the field of sleep medicine.”


Dr. Scheer will be presented with the award at SLEEP 2007, the 21st Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS).


Frank A. Scheer, PhD, is an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is an associate director of the medical chronobiology program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he is also an associate neuroscientist.


Dr. Scheer’s interests include the underlying mechanisms of sleep disturbances in patients with hypertension and developing new therapeutic strategies to improve sleep quality and lower blood pressure in those patients. He also hopes to contribute to the understanding of the involvement of the circadian timing system and behaviors such as the sleep/wake cycle in the day-night pattern observed in cardiovascular incidents.


He received a PhD in neuroscience from the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research, The Netherlands, and was a postdoctoral fellow in the division of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.


SLEEP 2007 is a four-day scientific meeting that will feature an international body of over 5,000 leading researchers and clinicians in the field of sleep medicine.


More than 1,000 research abstracts will be presented at SLEEP 2007, a joint venture of the AASM and the Sleep Research Society. SLEEP 2007 will bring to light new findings that enhance the understanding of the processes of sleep and aid the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders such as insomnia, narcolepsy and sleep apnea.


AASM is a professional membership organization dedicated to the advancement of sleep medicine and sleep-related research.


CONTACT:

Jim Arcuri

(708)492-0930, ext. 9317

jarcuri@aasm.org


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