Speakers

Danny Eckert

Dr. Danny Eckert is a National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia leadership fellow and a Mathew Flinders professor at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia. He currently serves as director of the Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health and was the inaugural deputy director and theme lead of clinical translation at the Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute.

Professor Eckert leads a comprehensive basic sciences and translational research program that focuses on identification of the causes of sleep apnea, optimization of existing therapies, and development of new tailored therapies. He is most well-known for his pioneering respiratory endotyping work, which has led to a new precision medicine therapeutic framework to understand and treat OSA, and for his research on the role of arousal mechanisms on sleep apnea pathogenesis and novel pharmacotherapy. He has more than 175 publications in the leading sleep and respiratory medicine and other cross-disciplinary and general medical journals/texts. His previous appointments include professor of medicine at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, principal research scientist at Neuroscience Research Australia, where he maintains affiliate appointments, and assistant professor within the Division of Sleep Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, in Boston.

Christina Frange

Cristina Frange is a physiotherapist who just finished her postdoctoral studies at Neurology and Neurosurgery Department at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP). She graduated with PhD in medicine and biology of sleep in 2017, at the Sleep Division of the Department of Psychobiology, UNIFESP, São Paulo, Brazil. Her research focuses on the association between sleep and other outcomes as well as on non-pharmacological interventions to improve sleep (exercise, physical activity, light therapy, massage) in various population, particulary people with stroke. She is currently investigating the contribution of physical activity on sleep pattern and obstructive sleep apnea in patients after stroke. She has received funding from the Sao Paulo Research Foundation for her investigations.

Frange is currently a clinician and researcher. She presented several times on the topic of sleep and its relevance to the physical therapy practice in national and international conferences. She was part of the team who presented a discussion session on sleep and physiotherapy at the World Confederation for Physical Therapy’s (WCPT) Congress in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2019; and a course on Sleep and Physiotherapy for the Israeli Association of Physical Therapy in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 2020. She edited the book Sleep and Physical Therapy: A Comprehensive Guide for Practitioners, by Springer, launched in 2022.

David Gozal

Dr. Gozal is currently the Marie M. and Harry L. Smith Endowed Chair and the Chairman of the Department of Child Health at the University of Missouri, as well as Physician-in-Chief of the University of Missouri Health Children’s Hospital. Dr Gozal’s research interests include projects such as gene and cellular regulation in hypoxia and sleep disruption, murine models of sleep disorders, and genomic and proteomic approaches to clinical and epidemiological aspects of sleep apnea in both adults and children. In addition, he has pioneered biomarker discovery and machine learning approaches for the diagnosis of sleep apnea across the lifespan. More recently, he has begun exploration of the role of the gut microbiome and circulating exosomes as mechanistic effectors and biomarkers in sleep disorders and associated morbidities.

He is Past President of the American Thoracic Society, the world leading organization for pulmonary, critical are and sleep medicine, was a member of the Board of Directors of the Sleep Research Society 2014-2016, and is Deputy Editor-in-Chief for the journal Sleep, and Associate Editor for ERJ, Pediatric Pulmonology, and Frontiers in Neurology and Frontiers in Psychiatry. He has been the recipient of the ATS Amberson Lecture in 2002, and was awarded the William C. Dement Academic Achievement Award by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine in 2013, and the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award of the National Sleep Foundation. He has also received two honorary doctorates from the University of Barcelona and University of Lleida in Spain. His research work has been continuously supported by grants from the NIH since 1992, and he has published over 800 peer-reviewed original articles carrying a H index of 129 and >70,000 citations (one of the top 2,000 most ever cited scientists in the world), along with more than 175 book chapters and reviews, edited 4 books, presented more than 1,000 scientific abstracts, and has extensively lectured all over the world.

Leila Kheirandish-Gozal

Dr. Leila Kheirandish-Gozal’s research focus is both on mechanisms and biomarkers that may mediate the strong correlation between obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and vascular dysfunction. Recently, she has pioneered MRI studies in children with OSA aiming to define structural-functional associations accounting for the cognitive deficits and the role of exosomes as effector of cognitive morbidity through disruption of the blood brain barrier. These studies are currently funded by federal grant support from the NIH. She has more than 177 peer-reviewed publications and co-edited the reference book of sleep disordered breathing in children.

Dr. Kheirandish-Gozal is Associate Editor of Frontiers in Neurology Chronobiology and the Journal of Child Science, and she serves on the editorial board of prestigious journals including American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Sleep, Sleep Medicine, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, International Journal of Epidemiological Research (IJER), Frontiers in Pediatrics, and Journal of Sleep Science (JSS).

Gilles Lavigne

Dr. Gilles Lavigne is professor at the Faculty of Dental Medicine at the Université de Montréal, Canada and active in clinical teaching and hospital services at the CHUM. He is a sleep and pain researcher at Sacre Coeur hospital and CHUM research center. 

He completed his DMD at  the Université de Montréal, a speciality training in oral medicine (stomatology) at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., postdoctoral training on neurobiology and pharmacology of pain at NIH, Bethesda, Maryland, and a PhD at the Faculty of Dentistry of the University of Toronto. He was research vice dean and dean of the Faculty of Dental Medicine at the Université de Montréal, and director of research at CIUSS Nord Ile de Montréal (3 hospitals and social community network). He got a Canada Research Chair in Pain, Sleep & Trauma (2007-2021). In 2009 he received a doctoral honoris causa from the University of Zurich, Switzerland. In 2018, he was appointed member of the Order of Canada. 

He has authored more than 250 scientific papers and co-edited 4 books. Dr. Gilles Lavigne is internationally recognized for his research on the interactions between sleep, pain and sleep disorders (sleep bruxism and apnea). 

Stanley Liu

Stanley Liu is an associate professor of otolaryngology, and by courtesy, of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine. He directs the Stanford Sleep Surgery Fellowship and is also a Stanford Biodesign faculty fellow. 

After graduating from Stanford University with a degree in biology, Liu received medical and dental degrees from the University of California-San Francisco, during which he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Research Scholar. He went on to an oral and maxillofacial surgery residency at UCSF, and then a sleep surgery fellowship with sleep surgery pioneer Dr. Robert Riley at Stanford University.

He now practices and teaches the full scope of sleep apnea surgery including nasal, palate, tongue base, hypoglossal nerve stimulation, genioglossus advancement, and maxillomandibular advancement (MMA) procedures. He introduced adult maxillary expansion (DOME) for OSA with Professor Christian Guilleminault in 2015 and have continued to update the comprehensive sleep surgery protocol at Stanford.

His active areas of research include dynamic airway examination to optimize sleep surgery outcome, virtual surgical planning for facial skeletal surgery, and neuromodulation of the upper airway. 

Francesca Milano

Francesca Milano has been practicing Dental Sleep Medicine since 2002, when her degree thesis became the start of a long collaboration with several Sleep Medicine Centers. Her major clinical and research interest is in the optimization of the oral device design. She is a co-author of the textbook “Dental Management of Obstructive Sleep Apnea. A Practical Manual”. She gives lessons at Pisa University in the Master “Child Dentistry and Interceptive orthodontics” and at Bologna University in the “Master in Sleep Medicine”. She is a Visiting Professor at Foggia University and at Padova University, where she is the Scientific Coordinator of the “Master in Dental Sleep Medicine”. She is the President of the Italian Board of Dental Sleep Medicine and she is the President of the European Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine EADSM.

She is certified “Italian Board of Dental Sleep Medicine” and she got the “Expert Level Accreditation of EADSM”.

Benjamin Pliska

Dr. Benjamin Pliska is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario School of Dentistry, and obtained his Certificate in Orthodontics and Master’s Degree in Dentistry from the University of Minnesota. He is an Associate Professor of the University of British Columbia Faculty of Dentistry, an Orthodontic Consultant at B.C. Children’s Hospital and maintains a private practice in Vancouver as a certified specialist in Orthodontics. Dr. Pliska’s research interests include craniofacial imaging and sleep medicine.

Narinder Singh

Dr. Narinder Singh is an ENT Specialist Surgeon, Clinical Associate Professor of Surgery at The University of Sydney, Australia’s oldest and largest medical school, and Chief of Otolaryngology, Head & Neck Surgery at Westmead Hospital, Sydney, Australia’s largest healthcare campus. 

Dr. Singh is a Rhinologist, specializing exclusively in disorders of the nose and sinuses, including nasal obstruction, surgery for snoring/ OSA, complex and extended endoscopic sinus procedures, anterior skull base surgery and rhinoplasty (functional and aesthetic). Dr Singh has a special interest in the role of nasal obstruction in the pathogenesis of dental and maxillo-facial disorders. He is considered to be the “go-to” ENT surgeon for dentists, orthodontists, maxillo-facial surgeons and cranio-facial pain specialists across Sydney and NSW.

Yun Kwok Wing

Professor Wing graduated from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China. He is currently chairman and professor in the Department of Psychiatry of the Faculty of Medicine of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is also the director of the Li Chiu Kong Family Sleep Assessment Unit of Shatin Hospital.

Professor Wing has diverse research interest in sleep and circadian medicine, psychiatric disorders, neuropsychiatry, and transcultural psychopharmacology. He has active contribution to the scientific communities, including his leadership role in the Hong Kong Society of Sleep medicine and Asian Sleep Society of Sleep medicine. He was also involved in the World Association of Sleep Medicine and World Sleep 2017, 2019 and 2022. He organized and chaired the Gordon Research conference on the “Cognitive Dysfunction in Brain diseases” in Hong Kong May 2019. He is currently serving at six editorial boards.

Professor Wing has given a number of plenary lectures in international and national sleep meetings. He and his research group has established the epidemiological data of various sleep disorders including sleep deprivation, OSA, insomnia, narcolepsy, and parasomnia across the age in Hong Kong. The group has recently completed a prevention study of insomnia among at-risk adolescents and successfully followed up the trajectory of childhood OSA into their early adulthood. In addition, the group has extensive work on REM Sleep behavioral disorder, a sleep disorder with high specificity in predicting future alpha-synucelinopathy neurodegeneration. 

Professor Wing was awarded the distinguished national award for Sleep Medicine Scientific Technological Advance in China by the Chinese Medical Doctor Association at 2010 and distinguished contributions to the development of sleep medicine and sleep research by Chinese Sleep Research Society at 2016. 

Audrey Yoon

Dr. Audrey Yoon is a dual-trained orthodontist and pediatric dentist who specializes in sleep medicine and esthetics. She practices the full scope of non-surgical and surgical orthodontics from pediatric to geriatric population for airway management.

She completed her orthodontic and pediatric dentistry residencies at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). She earned her Doctor of Dental Surgery and Master of Science degree, completing extensive research in Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) at UCLA. She is an adjunct assistant professor of Stanford Sleep Medicine Center at Stanford University, an honorary assistant professor of Orthodontics at the University of Hong Kong, an adjunct assistant professor in Orthodontics at University of Pacific, and a clinical associate faculty at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine. She is also a co-director of Pediatric Dental Sleep Mini-residency program at Tufts University. She is also a diplomate of American Board of Dental Sleep Medicine and diplomate of American Board of Orthodontics.

Currently her active areas of research include craniofacial growth modification, customized distractor designs, surgery-first approach of maxillomandibular advancement surgery technique, and the genomic study to identify genetic anatomical factors relating to OSA.