Dr. Louise Ince completed her BSc in Cognitive Neuroscience & Psychology, MRes in Integrative Biology and PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Manchester, UK. She performed her dissertation research on rhythmic glucocorticoid signaling & neutrophil migration to the lung after inflammatory challenge. She then studied the influence of biological rhythms upon adaptive immune function, including temporal variation in dendritic cell trafficking and modulation of vaccination efficacy.

Louise is a Research Scientist in the Fonken Lab, at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is using her expertise in rhythmic immunology to investigate how changes in neuroimmune rhythms contribute to cognitive decline in aging and dementia.

Dr. Emily Manoogian is a postdoctoral researcher at the Salk Institute who studies the intricate interaction between our body’s biological rhythms and the timing of our daily habits. These internal rhythms interact with our daily behaviors of when and how much we sleep, eat, and exercise.

As the head of human research in Dr. Satchin Panda’s lab at Salk, Emily investigates how the timing of these behaviors relate to health.

Prof Susan Golden received a B.A. (1978) in Biology from Mississippi University for Women and a Ph.D. (1983) in Genetics from the University of Missouri. After postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago, she joined the faculty of Biology at Texas A&M University (1986), where she was promoted to Distinguished Professor in 2003. She joined the Division of Biological Sciences at UCSD in 2008.

During her graduate work she developed genetic tools for the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus (PCC 7942), the first cyanobacterium shown to be subject to genetic transformation. This led to work on regulation of light-responsive photosynthesis gene expression in this organism during her postdoctoral research and at Texas A&M.

In the early 1990s she began a collaborative project with C.H. Johnson (Vanderbilt University) and T. Kondo (Nagoya University) that demonstrated circadian rhythms of gene expression in S. elongatus, which is currently the premier model organism for a prokaryotic circadian clock. The molecular basis of timekeeping in S. elongatus is now a major focus of her lab. Susan is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and an Member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Frank A.J.L. Scheer, PhD is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Senior Neuroscientist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), and the Director of the Medical Chronobiology Program at BWH.

Dr. Scheer’s work focuses on the influence of the endogenous circadian system and its disruption—such as with shift work and jet lag—on cardiovascular, pulmonary, and metabolic regulation and disease states, such as hypertension, asthma, obesity and diabetes. This work focuses both on the physiological mechanisms and therapeutic strategies of medical chronobiology.

Dr. Scheer has received numerous scientific awards, including the Young Investigator Award by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the First Place Clinical Research Young Investigator Award from the National Sleep Foundation/Sleep Research Society (combined), and the Neal Miller Award by the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research. Dr. Scheer is a Board Member of the European Society of Biological Rhythms and Member of the Program Committee of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.

Prof dr John Hogenesch began his scientific career as a neuroscientist interested in how genes regulate behavior. A series of inspiring mentors propelled him to pursue those interests across industry and academia. He has since worked with many scientists on projects in plants, flies, zebrafish, mice and people. This work has focused on the function of noncoding RNAs; building a Gene Atlas of the mouse, human and rat transcriptomes; and cell-based screening, among others.

He is particularly interested in genome biology with a focus on the circadian clock. In his lab at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, they work to uncover the mechanisms of the circadian clock and apply that knowledge to medicine. For example, their lab has discovered several core clock genes and proven that they regulate physiology and behavior. This includes his discovery of the transcription factor Bmal1 — the master regulator of the mammalian clock — along with its paralog, Bmal2, and its partner, Npas2. Later, his lab characterized Rora/Rorb/Roc as key regulators of Bmal1 and circadian function. They also discovered Chrono as a non-canonical repressor of Bmal1/Clock, and Kpnb1 as a required transporter of the PER/CRY complex.