Current research shows that healthy sleep is necessary for good health, and that sleep is an important factor in cardiovascular health, obesity, diabetes, and psychological well-being.
Dr. Grandner is an Instructor in the Department of Psychiatry, a member of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program (BSMP), the Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology (CSCN), and the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics (ITMAT) at the University of Pennsylvania.
His research focuses on how sleep and sleep-related behaviors are related to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, neurobehavioral functioning, mental health, and longevity. Current research projects are funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). He is currently studying how sleep patters are related to health, and the social, environmental, and behavioral factors that determine how we sleep. These studies involve population-level surveys, computer-based geospatial analyses (using GIS software), home-based assessments of sleep and health (using sleep diary, actigraphy, ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, etc.), and in-laboratory studies (using polysomnography, neurobehavioral performance testing, arterial tonometry, biomarker assessment, glucose tolerance tests, etc.). Find out how to become involved as a research participant.
Another area of his work involves examining sleep and health at the community and population levels. This work aims to understand how sleep is experienced on a societal level, and how this plays a role in the bigger picture of health. Some of these studies in this area have explored relationships among sleep and age, sex, income, marital status, eployment, diet, race/ethnicity, depression and other social and health-related factors.
Regarding his educational background, while earning a Bachelor's degree in Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology from the University of Rochester, he worked at the Rochester Sleep and Neurophysiology Research Laboratory with Dr. Michael Perlis and Dr. Donna Giles. He went on to earn a doctoral degree from the Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology at San Diego State University and the University of California, San Diego, working with Dr. Daniel Kripke at the Circadian Pacemaker Laboratory. He completed an APA internship with the Behavioral Medicine service at the San Diego VA Healthcare System and Outpatient Psychiatric Services at UCSD. He then went on to complete an AASM-accredited Behavioral Sleep Medicine Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, supervised by Dr. Philip Gehrman. This was part of a larger postdoctoral fellowship at the CSCN directed by Dr. Allan Pack. After completing his fellowship, he was appointed as a Research Associate in Medicine and then Instructor in Psychiatry.
His research has been profiled in hundreds of national and international news outlets, including NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox News, CNN, USA Today, WebMD, and news outlets in China, Vietnam, Russia, India, Pakistan, Italy, the UK, and other nations.
he has received two separate Outstanding Professor Awards (from the Department of Psychology and a student group) for my work as a statistics instructor.
Dr. Grandner maintains memberships with a number of academic organizations, including the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the Sleep Research Society (where he currently serves as chair of the Membership & Communications Committee), the American Heart Association, and the Society of Behavioral Sleep Medicine (where he is a founding member and serves on the website committee). He helped found the Pennsylvania Sleep Society, served on its first Board of Directors and is the current president. Every March you can find him at the EPI/NPAM Council Meeting of the American Heart Association and every June you can find him at the meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies. He has given a number of lectures on topics related to sleep and health.
For more information, see my CV.
