January 22-23, 2021
Summit on Adolescent Sleep and School Start Times:

Kevin C. Bastian, Ph.D. is a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Public Policy and the Director of Research at the Education Policy Initiative at Carolina at UNC Chapel Hill. His research focuses on (1) educator preparation, effectiveness, and retention and (2) cost-effective ways to improve student and teacher outcomes. He has led projects funded by the UNC System, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Belk Foundation, the US Department of Education, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr. Bastian has a Ph.D. in public policy and previously taught 6th grade in North Carolina.

Ashura Williams Buckley, MD is a pediatric neurologist and sleep medicine research physician in the Intramural Research Program at The Clinical Center at The National Institutes of Health. She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University, M.D. from SUNY, Stony Brook, and completed her training in child neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital. She then completed a fellowship in Clinical Trials at the National Institute of Mental Health and a Clinical Fellowship in Sleep Medicine at the NYU affiliated New York Sleep Institute. She is interested in the role of sleep, both normal and abnormal, in shaping the developing brain, with a focus on abnormal sleep neurophysiology in severe forms of autism, obsessive compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, depression and other serious neurodevelopmental disorders. The ultimate goal of her research is to work collaboratively, cross discipline to elucidate underlying aberrant, sleep-mediated neurotransmission early in the course of neurodevelopment that might offer potential therapeutic targets.

Orfeu M. Buxton, PhD is Professor in the Department of Biobehavioral Health at Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on the causes and consequences of chronic sleep deficiency in the workplace, home, and society, and the physiologic and social mechanisms by which these outcomes arise. Dr. Buxton published over 120 peer-reviewed manuscripts, and serves as Editor in Chief for Sleep Health (https://www.sleephealthjournal.org/). Dr. Buxton served on the State Joint Commission on School Start Times to evaluate school start time policies and make recommendations in a report to Pennsylvania legislators: Sleep Deprivation in Adolescents: The Case for Delaying Secondary School Start Times, discussed on radio, podcast. (https://www.witf.org/2020/02/18/proposal-for-schools-to-start-later/ and https://wpsu.psu.edu/digital/reach-podcast/the-family/)

Mary A. Carskadon, Ph.D. is Professor of Psychiatry & Human Behavior at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University and director of the Chronobiology and Sleep Research Laboratory at EP Bradley Hospital. An authority on adolescent sleep and circadian rhythms, her research also includes other aspects of sleep and circadian physiology and behaviors in humans.  Dr. Carskadon is a past president of the Sleep Research Society and has received awards from several national organizations recognizing her scientific, educational, and public policy contributions.  She is also an elected Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Stephanie Crowley, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and the Director of the Pediatric Chronobiology & Sleep Research Program at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, IL.  Crowley’s research program focuses on understanding basic circadian physiology and sleep behavior across adolescence, as well as developing and testing strategies to correct circadian misalignment (the mismatch between sleep and the circadian system) that is often experienced by teens in middle and high school due to early school start times.  Her work is primarily funded by the NIH/NHLBI.  

Ann Gallagher has been working on issues of juvenile health, equity, education, and justice issues for over 20 years. Committed to providing objective, evidence-based research and analysis to inform decision makers and streamline policy to improve the lives of children, Ann has led several national data collections including the first national Census of Juveniles on Probation for the Department of Justice. Recognizing the link between health, sleep, and behavior, Ann joined Start School Later Healthy Hours in 2012 serving in several positions including on the National Management Staff, the Board of Directors, and the National Executive Board.

Lauren Hale, Ph.D.  is a Professor of Family, Population, and Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University. Dr. Hale studies the social patterning of sleep health and how it contributes to inequalities in health and well-being with current or previous funding from NICHD, NIDDK, NHLBI, and NIA.  Dr. Hale serves on the Board of Directors (Vice Chairman) of the National Sleep Foundation and is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal Sleep Health.  She also serves on the Scientific Advisory Panel of the Pajama Program and the Children and Screens Institute. 

Debbie Hersman is a passionate safety leader who has served as the Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington, DC; CEO of the National Safety Council based in Chicago, IL; and Chief Safety Officer at Waymo, Google's self-driving car project located in Mountain View, CA. She is currently serving as a corporate director of NiSource, a public utility serving 3.5 million customers. She is also a mother to three sons who have attended high schools in three states and love to sleep!

Shane R. Jimerson is a Professor of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Jimerson is a Nationally Certified School Psychologist and recognized by The American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress as a Board Certified Expert and Diplomat, and is included in their international registry of Experts in Traumatic Stress with specialization in working with children, families, and schools. Dr. Jimerson is currently the Editor-Elect of School Psychology Review, the Senior Editor for International Science for the School Psychology journal (2017-2020), currently President-Elect of the Society for the Study of School Psychology (2019-2021), and was recently President of the International School Psychology Association (2013-2019), and was recently President of Division 16 (School Psychology) of the American Psychological Association (2011-2013) and was recently Editor of the School Psychology Quarterly journal (2012-2016). His international professional and scholarly activities aim to advance and promote science, practice, and policy relevant to education and school psychology, in an effort to benefit children, families, and communities across the country and throughout the world.

Irena Keller, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Las Positas College in Livermore, California. She is also Chair of the California Chapter of Start School Later, a national non-profit organization promoting healthy school start times. Dr. Keller played an active role in passing California’s law pushing back school start times. It was signed into effect in 2019, making California the first state to do so. Dr. Keller holds a MA in Education from the University of Haifa and a doctorate in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. Her areas of expertise include Sleep, Learning, and Life-Span Development. 

Lisa Meltzer is a Professor of Pediatrics at National Jewish Health.  She received her Ph.D. in Clinical Health Psychology from the University of Florida, and completed her clinical internship and post-doctoral fellowship at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.  Dr. Meltzer is certified in Behavioral Sleep Medicine by the American Board of Sleep Medicine, and is a Diplomate of the Board of Behavioral Sleep Medicine. Dr. Meltzer has a funded program of research examining sleep in children with chronic illnesses and their parents, objective and subjective measures of pediatric sleep, and the impact of changing school start times on health outcomes.

Judith Owens, MD is Co-Director of Sleep Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital and a Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. She is an internationally-recognized authority on pediatric sleep and the author of over 150 original research and review articles in peer-review journals, chapters, and books on the topic.  Her particular research interests are in the neurobehavioral and health consequences of sleep problems in adolescents and the role of school start times, sleep health education, and cultural and psychosocial issues impacting on sleep.  She was the lead author on the AAP 2014 Policy Statement on healthy school start times. 

Phyllis Payne, MPH, is the Implementation Director at Start School Later. A public health educator and science writer who enjoys turning science into plain language and policy, Ms. Payne has written materials on numerous subjects for the National Institutes of Health and helped launch the National Kidney Disease Education Program. She cofounded SLEEPinFairfax to promote awareness about sleep health and achieve healthy school hours. She advocated successfully for changes to the Virginia curriculum to add objectives about sleep health and drowsy driving and helped draft the Fairfax County Public School Health and Wellness Policy.

Rafael Pelayo, MD FAASM is a clinical professor at Stanford University School of Medicine’s division of Sleep Medicine and the author of How to Sleep. Dr. Pelayo’ s focuses on the treatment of sleep disorders in patients of all ages.  He is president the California Sleep Society, chairs the AASM PAC, and serves on the board of the National Sleep Foundation as well as Start School Later.   Dr. Pelayo teaches the Stanford University Dement’s Sleep and Dreams undergraduate course and co-authored the course textbook.  He helped lead the effort for California to pass the first law supporting adolescent sleep health.

Mark R. Rosekind, Ph.D. is currently the Chief Safety Innovation Officer at Zoox, an autonomous mobility company. Prior to Zoox, he was appointed by President Obama to serve as the 15th Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) (2014 – 2017) and as the 40th member of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) (2010 – 2014). Before his service in Washington, DC, Dr. Rosekind founded Alertness Solutions, a scientific consulting firm that specialized in fatigue management. He previously directed the Fatigue Countermeasures Program at the NASA Ames Research Center and was chief of the Aviation Operations Branch in the Flight Management and Human Factors Division. Before NASA, he was the director of the Center for Human Sleep Research at the Stanford University Sleep Center.

Sonia Rubens, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Counseling Psychology at Santa Clara University. She holds a doctorate in Clinical Child Psychology from the University of Kansas.  Her research focuses on understanding and promoting healthy sleep habits in youth. She is particularly interested in the link between exposure to trauma, sleep, and mental health in youth, as well as contextual and cultural factors that influence these associations. In addition to her research and teaching, Dr. Rubens is a member of the Pediatric Sleep Council (https://www.babysleep.com/) and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Latinx Psychology.

Jared M. Saletin PhD received his Bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins University and his PhD in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. He then completed a T32 postdoctoral fellowship at Brown University before joining its faculty in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior. He is the Associate Director of the E.P. Bradley Hospital Sleep Research Laboratory where he leads and contribute to research focused on sleep and child mental health. He is particularly interested in using cognitive neuroscience techniques to better understand how sleep contributes to neurodevelopment and cognitive well-being in youth with conditions such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity-disorder.

Azizi Seixas, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at NYU Langone Health, in the Department of Population Health and Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Seixas’ research broadly focuses on two areas: 1) biological, behavioral, clinical, environmental, and psychosocial determinants of cardiovascular and cardiometabolic disease/conditions, mental health, and brain health (dementia and aging), and 2) developing adaptive, precise, and personalized  behavioral interventions to improve health and well-being with the use of machine learning, translational artificial intelligence, and digital technology.

Terra Ziporyn Snider, Ph.D. is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Start School Later, a nonprofit dedicated to school hours compatible with healthy sleep. An historian of medicine and science writer whose books include The New Harvard Guide to Women's Health, The Women's Concise Guide to Emotional Well-Being, and Nameless Diseases, Dr. Snider was an associate editor at the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). She has written on a wide range of health issues for both popular and professional audiences and received science writing fellowships from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, and the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory.

Wendy Troxel, Ph.D. is a Senior Behavioral Scientist at the RAND Corporation.  A licensed clinical psychologist and certified behavioral sleep medicine specialist, her work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, and private foundations and corporations. Troxel’s TED talk (https://www.ted.com/talks/wendy_troxel_why_school_
should_start_later_for_teens) on the impact of school start times on adolescent sleep has received nearly 1.9 million views and is at the forefront of conversations nationally and internationally, for schools considering healthy start times. She and her RAND colleagues published a highly influential economics analysis (https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2109.html) showing that delaying school start times could result in an $83 billion boost to the U.S. economy over a decade.

Kyla Wahlstrom, Ph.D. is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Minnesota, where she studies educational leadership and policy outcomes related to later school start times. In 1996, she conducted the first-ever comprehensive, district-wide research on later high school start times, examining all aspects, including student performance and health outcomes, plus transportation, effects on families and teachers, athletics, and student employment. In 2010 she was awarded a multi-year grant from the CDC to continue this research, the findings of which led to many late-start policy initiatives across the U.S. Before becoming a researcher, she spent 19 years working in public education as a classroom teacher, a school principal, and a district coordinator of special education.

Rachel Widome, Ph.D. is a social epidemiologist and Associate Professor in the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health at the University of Minnesota. The focus on her research centers on how environmental and contextual factors (such as social or economic conditions) influence chronic disease-related behaviors. Her sleep research uses natural experiment methodologies to explore the role sleep plays healthy youth development and how policy can promote healthful sleep. Dr. Widome the principal investigator of the START/LEARN sleep cohort studies.

Amy R. Wolfson, Ph.D. is a Professor of Psychology at Loyola University Maryland. Her longstanding scholarship focuses broadly on adolescents’ sleep health and daytime functioning with a deep commitment to preventive-interventions including delaying school start times and her Sleep-Smart program for early adolescents. Her current work is examining the sleep health, schedules, and environment of youth residing in the juvenile justice system. She is one of the co-authors on the AAP 2014 Policy Statement on healthy school start times and co-edited Sleep Health’s special issue on school start times. Dr. Wolfson is an Associate Editor of Sleep Health and on the Board of Directors of Start School Later.