The Young Investigators Research Forum is a research training program designed to aid the career development of promising early career investigators in circadian and sleep research by providing opportunities to network with senior sleep investigators, exposure to funding agencies and sleep funding mechanisms, refine their research ideas, and receive guidance to thrive in an academic sleep research career.
The Young Investigators Research Forum allows early-career investigators to interact with senior investigators and officers from federal and nonprofit funding agencies. The forum includes didactic presentations, leadership workshops, small group sessions covering grantsmanship, a mock grant review, and the mentor-mentee relationship. As active participants, attendees can present their research, provide feedback on each other’s research proposals, and review a grant.
The Young Investigators Research Forum is sponsored by ResMed and Takeda. Additional support is provided by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine, and the Sleep Research Society Foundation.
The following are the trainees that were accepted and will be participating in the YIRF 2026:
Dr. Ghada Abu Irsheed is an Assistant Professor at Loyola University Chicago and nurse scientist specializing in sleep health. Her research examines multidimensional sleep health and their impact on neuroplasticity, stroke recovery, and cardiovascular risk. She is conducting a scoping review on sleep health in stroke patients and has expertise in behavioral sleep interventions and sleep disparities.
Dr. Adrianna Acevedo-Fontanez is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pittsburgh, where she also earned her PhD in Epidemiology. As a sleep and cardiovascular epidemiologist, her research centers on reducing sleep health disparities among marginalized populations. her work focuses on obstructive sleep apnea, with an emphasis on improving real-world screening, diagnosis, and treatment pathways.
Dr. Bethany Armentrout is a T32-supported postdoctoral fellow in Biobehavioral and Nursing Health Informatics at the University of Washington. Her research examines how sleep and circadian disruption affect glucose regulation in young adults with Type 1 diabetes, using metabolomics to identify clinically relevant pathways that may inform sleep-based interventions.
Dr. Silvana Bellotto is an otolaryngologist and sleep physician from Brazil and a Sleep Surgery Research Fellow at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Her research focuses on upper airway biomechanics and neurostimulation in obstructive sleep apnea.
Dr. Ruixue Cai is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses on sleep health, circadian rhythms, frailty, and cognitive decline in aging populations. She integrates actigraphy, physiological signal processing, and culturally sensitive approaches to study sleep and aging in diverse populations.
Dr. Christopher Carosella is a pediatric neurologist with subspecialty training in epilepsy and sleep medicine. His research centers on the treatment of epilepsy, sleep disorders, and neurodevelopmental disabilities, with a particular focus on the mechanistic overlap between sleep neurophysiology, epilepsy and neurodevelopment. He studies how sleep architecture modulates epileptiform activity and neurocognitive outcomes.
Dr. Jun Ha Chang is an Instructor in Neurological Sciences at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. She develops medication-aware digital biomarkers using actigraphy, wearable sensors, and real-world driving/mobility data to quantify sleep and circadian variability and its links to cognition, mobility, and quality of life in aging and neurodegenerative disease including dementia.
Dr. Shuqiang Chen is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Before that, he earned a PhD in computational neuroscience at Boston University. He is trained at the intersection of sleep, neuroscience, and statistical modeling and his research aims to understand how the sleeping brain shapes health, aging, and neurological dysfunction.
Dr. Jesse Cook is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) with a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology from UW. He is a licensed clinical psychologist with a specialty in behavioral sleep medicine. His research centers broadly on the intersection of sleep and mental health, with a primary focus on advancing the clinical care of unexplained hypersomnolence.
Dr. Amy Costa is a T32 postdoctoral scholar at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research uses computational psychiatry approaches to identify and personalize neurodegeneration prevention strategies. She aims to uncover how multidimensional sleep health can be used for markers of neurodegeneration disease and progression.
Dr. Gina Erato Garza is a clinical psychology postdoctoral researcher whose program examines psychosocial predictors of perinatal sleep difficulties and their impact on infant outcomes. The primary goals in her research are to understand perinatal sleep (as a protective and risk factor) for maternal and infant health outcomes to develop interventions to optimize perinatal sleep.
Dr. Britani Holland is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the McCrae Sleep Research Laboratory at the University of South Florida College of Nursing. She is a licensed clinical social worker and researcher specializing in trauma, sleep psychology, stigma, and chronic pain. Her translational research focuses on behavioral sleep interventions and trauma interventions for vulnerable populations.
Dr. Jing Huang completed her doctoral training at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and is currently a Postdoctoral Scientist at the California Pacific Medical Center. Her research focuses on the intersections of sleep health, physical frailty, and cognitive decline in older adults, with a particular interest in developing interventions to improve these domains in aging populations.
Dr. Alison Huckenpahler is a psychiatrist focused on the intersection of sleep and mood disorders. Her interest in sleep medicine was shaped by both clinical experience and a personal history of narcolepsy. Her current work develops sleep-based interventions for depression, including clinical trials targeting slow-wave sleep in treatment-resistant depression.
Dr. Jeongyeon Hwang is a cognitive/behavioral neurology fellow at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and an incoming sleep medicine fellow at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on the role of sleep physiology as a biomarker and potential interventional target for the prevention of neurodegenerative diseases.
Dr. Kening Jiang is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She received her PhD in Epidemiology and MHS degrees in Biostatistics and Epidemiology from Johns Hopkins. Her research focuses on linking sleep disturbances and sensory impairments with cognitive and brain health outcomes among older adults.
Dr. Shivangi Kaplish is an Orofacial Pain resident at Tufts School of Dental Medicine. Her work focuses on temporomandibular disorders, muscular/neuropathic pain, headaches, sleep–pain interactions, interdisciplinary care, and cancer-related orofacial pain. She holds advanced training in Geriatric dentistry, oral biology, and health policy from Harvard School of Dental Medicine.
Dr. Owais Khan holds a PhD degree in Control Systems from Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences. As a Postdoctoral Researcher at Arizona State University, he worked on multiple projects funded by the National Institutes of Health and the AASM. Currently, he is an Assistant Research Scientist at Arizona State University.
Dr. Neil Kondamuri is a PGY-4 otolaryngology resident at the University of Chicago and plans to pursue a sleep fellowship in the coming year. His current research examines cardiovascular outcomes following neurostimulation for obstructive sleep apnea.
Dr. Christopher Lau’s academic focus bridges pulmonary and sleep medicine, with a strong interest in care delivery for chronic respiratory failure. He is currently engaged in outcomes research on sleep-disordered breathing at UCLA. Clinically, Dr. Lau has extensive experience in high-acuity intensive care units, including transplant and Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) care, and is dedicated to health equity across diverse populations.
Dr. Sueyeon Lee is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing, Loyola University Chicago. Her research focuses on sleep health and chronotype and epigenetic pathways linking sleep to cardiometabolic risk in midlife women, integrating objective sleep measures using wearables and biomarker approaches.
Dr. Yike Li is a Research Assistant Professor in Vanderbilt Otolaryngology whose work integrates neurophysiology, signal processing, and AI to advance precision care for obstructive sleep apnea. He engages in NIH‑funded neurostimulation studies and develops computational models and pipelines for sleep‑data processing, airway phenotyping, mechanism discovery, and therapy selection.
Dr. Caeli Malloy is a nurse scientist and T32 Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Washington School of Nursing. Her research focuses on insomnia and symptom management in adolescents with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, collectively known as inflammatory bowel diseases.
Dr. Rachael Muck is a Postdoctoral Associate at Washington State University’s Sleep and Performance Research Center. Her research focuses on fatigue risk management in operational settings, as well as laboratory studies examining task-dependent phenotypic vulnerability to sleep loss and the effectiveness of pharmacological countermeasures.
Dr. Casandra Nyhuis is a postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health studying how sleep influences cognitive, cardiometabolic, and mental health across the lifespan. Since 2011, she has worked in sleep labs across the country, integrating rigorous sleep measurement with epidemiologic methods to generate evidence that informs health promotion.
Dr. Purbanka Pahari is pursuing postdoctoral research in Aging Research in Sleep Equity & Dementia Prevention in patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Her research primarily focuses on investigating the effects of OSA-related physiological burdens on cognition & AD pathology in older, community-dwelling adults.
Dr. Alessandra Shuster is a postdoctoral researcher with dual affiliation at University of California, Irvine and Children’s Hospital of Orange County. Her research focuses on determining neural biomarkers and mechanisms of cognitive health in sleep, with a focus on understanding neurodevelopmental trajectories and improving long-term outcomes.
Dr. Garima Sinha is an Orthodontic resident with a diverse background in dental medicine and research. Passionate about exploring sleep apnea management, she aims to contribute to this field as an orthodontist. Recognized with awards like the Frances Best Watkins Award and the American Association of Orthodontists Dental Student Scholarship, she strives to advance dental sleep medicine through impactful research and innovation.
Dr. Muhammad Thalil is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Center for Healthy Aging at Penn State. His research focuses on multidimensional sleep health as a modifiable factor in chronic pain, frailty, and cognitive aging. Using large longitudinal datasets and clinical cohorts, he examines how behavioral and biological processes interact to influence the link between sleep and age-related outcomes.
Dr. Sikawat Thanaviratananich is a staff physician at Cleveland Clinic’s Sleep Disorders Center. He completed a Sleep Medicine fellowship at University of Michigan and a Neurology residency at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center. His research focuses on REM sleep behavior disorder, central disorders of hypersomnolence and novel polysomnographic parameters.
Dr. Selene Tobin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Public Health at California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo. Her research examines bidirectional relationships between multiple dimensions of sleep and health behaviors (e.g., physical activity and diet) to inform behavioral interventions aimed at improving cardiometabolic health.
Dr. Po-Yang Tsou is a pediatric pulmonologist and sleep physician at Boston Children’s Hospital and T32 research fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is a past American Thoracic Society ASPIRE Fellow. His research develops polysomnography-based endotyping methods to individualize treatment for pediatric obstructive sleep apnea.
Dr. Delainey Wescott completed her clinical psychology internship at Western Psychiatric Hospital and is a post-doctoral scholar at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Her research program focuses on sleep and circadian rhythms as transdiagnostic risk factors and treatment targets in mood disorders and suicide with a focus on adolescents and young adults.
Dr. Ronit Witztum’s long-term career goal is to become an independent investigator studying sleep physiology. Following medical training, she pursued translational neuroscience research in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), focusing on brain iron metabolism. As a postdoctoral fellow, she examines how sleep manipulation affects memory and tau pathology by integrating physiological and behavioral approaches in an AD mouse model.
Dr. Minzhi Ye is an Assistant Professor at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. She is interested in understanding how sleep disturbances develop and persist among older adults facing chronic illness and caregiving contexts that shape sleep health in underserved populations.
1Supported through a travel scholarship from the Sleep Research Society Foundation
2Supported through a travel scholarship from the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine
