Makoto Kawai, M.D. is a Clinical Associate Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences - Stanford Center for Sleep Sciences and Medicine, who focuses on understanding the association between sleep, brain and cognition in normal and pathological aging. His research and clinical emphasis is on understanding and treating sleep issues (like sleep disordered breathing and insomnia) in older adults with neurodegenerative disorders. In order to further develop his clinical research skills in this field, he was appointed as a post-doctoral Fellow in the Sierra Pacific Mental Illness Research Education and Clinical Centers (MIRECC), VA Palo Alto Health Care System and the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, with Dr. Ruth O’Hara serving as his primary mentor. He has extensive experience reading and scoring sleep EEGs, and assessing for sleep disorders in older adults. He was awarded National Institute on Aging grant to examine if sleep disordered breathing associated-hypoxia can be used as a biomarker to predict cognitive decline and dementia in older adults.