AIs in Never Never Land:  Reimagining sleep care in the digital age

Dr. Benjamin L. Smarr, Ph.D. Neurobiology, is an associate professor at UCSD’s Shu Chien-Gene Lay Department of Bioengineering and the Halicioğlu Data Science Institute. His work leverages his domain expertise in biological rhythms and neuroendocrinology to uncover patterns in diverse sets of IoT time series data that carry actionable information to impact physical health, mental health, and performance. In 2020 he became the technical lead of the global collaborative TemPredict study, which developed algorithms for early detection of COVID-19 infection, and unique cyberinfrastructure to serve rapid, collaborative explorations of population-scale, personal time series data. Leveraging these data and others, the Smarr lab focuses on applications in women’s health and aging, and technical development in service of debiasing algorithms, increasing participant engagement, and accelerating the emergence of precision health care for individuals and populations alike.