John Jung, Sonia Ancoli-Israel, Ken Green
Sonia Ancoli-Israel, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine, Research Director of the Sleep Medicine Clinic at UCSD, and Co-Director of the UCSD GCRC Gillin Laboratory of Sleep and Chronobiology. Dr. Ancoli-Israel received her Bachelor’s Degree from the State University of New York, Stony Brook, a Master’s Degree in Psychology from California State University, Long Beach and a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California, San Francisco.
In March 2007 she received the National Sleep Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award which was awarded in Washington, D.C. in recognition of her contributions to the fields of sleep science and public health.
http://www.sleepfoundation.org/site/c.huIXKjM0IxF/b.2417141/k.2E30/
The_National_Sleep_Foundation.htm
Dr. Ancoli-Israel is one of the nation's preeminent experts in the field of sleep disorders and sleep research in aging. She was the first at UCSD to be board certified in Sleep Medicine and is the only faculty member at UCSD to be board certified in Behavioral Sleep Medicine. Her current interests include the longitudinal effect of sleep disorders on aging, the effect of circadian rhythms on sleep, therapeutic interventions for sleep problems in dementia, and fatigue, particularly the relationship between sleep, fatigue and circadian rhythms in cancer and other chronic illnesses.
Dr. Ancoli-Israel’s research has shown that a sleep disorder called sleep apnea is more common in the elderly than in younger adults. Sleep apnea is a disorder during which people stop breathing during sleep which can lead to hypoxia, excessive daytime sleepiness, and cognitive impairment among other things. She has also shown that sleep apnea is even more common in patients with dementia than in cognitively intact elderly. One of her recent studies examined the effect of treating sleep apnea on cognitive functioning in patients with mild to moderate dementia. The overall goal of her research has been to improve quality of life in older adults and thus to postpone institutionalization.
Dr. Ancoli-Israel wrote three books, one of which is All I Want is a Good Night’s Sleep, and over 300 publications. She continues to publish in medical and psychiatric journals on a regular basis.
