Grant & Award Recipients

Jing Wang is a PhD student in environmental epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She also works in the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Her research focuses on applying causal inference and advanced quantitative methods to investigate both the individual and joint effects of environmental exposures on sleep health, particularly the roles of air pollution, the built environment, and extreme weather events in relation to obstructive sleep apnea. She is passionate about translating epidemiological findings into actionable interventions to reduce sleep health disparities and improve population well-being.

Dr. Samantha Keil is a postdoctoral associate and translational neuroscientist investigating the role sleep health plays in neurodegenerative disease progression. Integrating her preclinical and clinical research, she aims to define how sleep regulates brain fluid clearance across neurodegenerative disease states, such as Alzheimer’s Disease. Her current work aims to establish the impact of chronically disrupted sleep/untreated obstructive sleep apnea on glymphatic function. In the future, Dr. Keil’s research program will utilize multimodal neuroimaging to evaluate the interplay of sleep and brain fluid clearance dynamics across disease modalities, bridging mechanistic insight with clinical translation to inform preventative and therapeutic strategies.

Dr. Josh Leota is a research fellow in the School of Psychological Sciences at Monash University, specializing in sleep, circadian rhythms, and physical activity. His research combines wearable technology and large-scale cohort data to investigate how behavioral timing, such as when we sleep or exercise, affects health, performance, and recovery. His work aims to uncover modifiable, time-based behavioral patterns to inform personalized interventions and improve health outcomes at both individual and population levels.

Zachary Oatley is a second-year medical student who became interested in sleep medicine after his own diagnosis of unrecognized obstructive sleep apnea. He founded Dream AI, a startup developing machine learning tools for early apnea detection, and personally developed the code behind its predictive algorithms. The project led to milestone funding, a utility patent, and a clinical validation study. Zach is also a committed student advocate who has led national efforts to modernize medical education.