Birgit Högl, MD
Associate Professor of Neurology
Head of the Sleep Disorders Clinic
Department of Neurology
Innsbruck Medical University
Innsbruck, Austria
Birgit Högl is Associate Professor of Neurology and Head of both the Sleep Disorders Unit and the Sleep Research Group at the Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria. She has authored or co-authored over 250 scientific manuscripts and almost 40 book chapters in the field of sleep. She has also co-edited a number of books, including “Sleep Medicine” published in 2008 by Cambridge University Press, “Sleep and Circadian Rhythms in Parkinson´s disease”, co-edited with Prof A. Videnovic from Harvard University (Published in 2015), as well as other forthcoming publications (first international comprehensive “Compendium on RBD”, (Springer) and the German “Handbuch Schlafmedizin”).
Klaus Berger, MD, MPH, MSc
Chair
Institute of Epidemiology & Social Medicine
University of Muenster
Muenster, Germany
Klaus Berger is a neurologist and epidemiologist and full professor of epidemiology and social medicine. He currently holds the position of Director of the Institute of Epidemiology and Social Medicine at the University of Muenster in Germany. He received his medical degree from the Ruhr-University in Bochum, Germany in 1987 and his postgraduate training in public health (M.P.H.) and epidemiology (M.S.c.) from the University of Bielefeld in Germany and the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, USA, respectively. His scientific focus is on the epidemiology of neurologic and psychiatric diseases and health services research in population based studies and patient registers. Since April 2017 he is the chairman of the German National Cohort (GNC), a large prospective cohort study in Germany involving 200000 participants.
Yves Dauvilliers, MD, PhD
Head of the Sleep Laboratory
University of Montpellier,
Montpellier, France
Yves Dauvilliers is Professor of neurology and physiology, and Head of the clinical and research activity of the sleep laboratory at the University of Montpellier, France since 2005. He is a member of the scientific board of the French Sleep Medicine and Research Society, a member of the European Sleep Research Society, European-Narcolepsy Network, International REM sleep behavior study group, and of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (Co-chair of the Narcolepsy section). He is the Director of the Sleep Disorders Centre, Department of Neurology, Gui de Chauliac Hospital, Montpellier since 2005, a member of the Clinical Research Department, University Hospital, Montpellier since 2000, a member of the scientific board of the University of Montpellier, associate coordinator of the Gui-de-Chauliac University Hospital, Montpellier-France, since 2012, Editor in Chief of Frontiers in Neurology, Section “Sleep and Chronobiology”, and Member of the Editorial Board of Sleep Medicine and Sleep. He has performed many research studies in the diagnosis, epidemiology, pathophysiology and therapy of several sleep disorders, neurological disorders including narcolepsy, hypersomnias, parasomnias and RLS. He is a member of the research group INSERM U1061 and coordinator of the Sleep research axis. He is the coordinator of the French National Reference Network for Orphan Diseases (Narcolepsy, Hypersomnia, Kleine-Levin Syndrome) since 2006. Since 2002, he is the Principal Investigator in several open and placebo-controlled national and multi-national clinical trials in sleep disorders on narcolepsy, on hypersomnia, on RLS, and parasomnia and insomnia, and involved in the conception and design of these studies. He is the author or coauthor of more than 290 papers published in international and national peer-reviewed journals, several book chapters, and he has also edited two French book related to sleep medicine.
Diego Garcia-Borreguero, Md, PhD
Director
Sleep Research Institute (IIS)
Madrid, Spain
Diego García-Borreguero is the Director of the Sleep Research Institute in Madrid, Spain. Until 2005, he was Director of the Sleep Disorders Centre at the Department of Neurology of the Fundación Jiménez Díaz (Autonomous University of Madrid). He has completed fellowships in sleep medicine and sleep research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, USA and underwent residency training at the Max Planck Institute in Munich, Germany. He received his MD from the University of Navarre (Pamplona, Spain) and completed his PhD at the University of Munich.
García-Borreguero’s main area of research is movement disorders in sleep, and RLS in particular. He has published extensively in this field in international peer-reviewed journals. He is currently (2018) the president of the International RLS Study Group (IRLSSG) and directs several RLS task forces. He is also a member of numerous professional organizations related to the field of sleep science, such as the World Association of Sleep Medicine (WASM) and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
Garcia-Borreguero has published widely in the field of sleep, and particularly in RLS.
Daragh Bogan
London
United Kingdom
Daragh Bogan is a Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) patient and joined the board of RLS-UK, the British RLS Association in 2010 after almost two decades trying to find an accurate diagnosis for his condition. In 2011 he became the Chair of the organisation and led its new growth strategy, recognising the increasing occurrence of patient self-diagnosis/self-management using digital information. Today RLS-UK hosts the world's largest social media presence.
In 2017 he became President of the European Alliance for Restless Legs Syndrome, a pan-European patient organisation, which today combines the patient organizations from seven European countries. Daragh has led a number of EARLS initiatives, including the 2019/2020 Patient Survey and EARLS' digital strategy. Today, EARLS hosts the world's largest RLS forum which has in excess of twelve thousand patient members. Daragh also participates in several committees and panels.
Mauro Manconi, MD
Head of the Sleep Center
Neurocenter of Southern Switzerland
Lugano, Switzerland
Mauro Manconi is Head of the sleep center at the neurocenter of Southern Switzerland as well as Titular Professor in Neurology at Bern University. He earned his medical degree (1997) at the University of Bologna, Italy, discussing a thesis on Central Alveolar Hypoventilation. He completed his residency in neurology (2002) at the University of Ferrara, Italy, discussing a thesis on RLS and pregnancy. He defended his PhD in Sleep Medicine (2005) at the University of Bologna on REM Behaviour Disorder. For 10 years he served as a clinical researcher at the Sleep Center of the Scientific Institute of San Raffaele, Milan, Italy. He served for 1 year as Visiting Professor at the Circadian Rodent Lab of the Wisconsin Medical College, Milwaukee, WI, USA, where he obtained the “Excellence in Sleep Research Award 2006” for his innovative and leading research activity in developing a pharmacogenetic rodent model for RLS. He is currently involved in clinical and basic research in the field of sleep, with particular interest in sleep-related motor disorders and his lab recently obtained the certification as a center of excellence in RLS by the international RLS Foundation. He has published over 100 scientific articles and 2 books and is a member of various International Sleep Societies.
Barbara Schormair, PhD
Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Director
Institute of Neurogenomics
Helmholtz Zentrum München
German Research Center for Environmental Health
Munich, Germany
Barbara Schormair is a Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Director at the Institute of Neurogenomics at the Helmholtz Zentrum München, the German Research Center for Environmental Health. Dr. Schormair completed her Master of Science in biology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich and the Julius Maximilian University Wuerzburg in Germany. From 2006 to 2010, she undertook her PhD at the Institute of Developmental Genetics and the Institute of Human Genetics at the Technical University Munich, focusing on the genetics of RLS. Research stays at the Max-Planck-Institute of Psychiatry in Munich and the Center for Sleep Sciences and Medicine at Stanford University, California, USA, extended her expertise in statistical genetics. Dr. Schormair was a lead investigator in all major large-scale genetic association studies published for RLS to date. Her research is focused on elucidating the genetic basis of RLS and other movement disorders by applying cutting-edge genomic technologies. She is a member of the following associations: the European Restless Legs Study Group, the European Society of Human Genetics, and the American Society of Human Genetics.
Rosalia Silvestri, MD
Associate Professor of Neurology
Messina Medical School
Messina, Italy
Rosalia Silvestri served as a postdoctoral fellow at the department of psychiatry at Stanford University, USA for a year, and as an assistant Professor in neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard University, Boston, USA for six years.
Since the early nineties she has directed the University Sleep Center in Messina, Italy dealing with both adult and pediatric sleep disorders. As a clinician and a researcher her interest has been in sleep-related movement disorders, nocturnal seizures and their differential diagnosis with adult and pediatric parasomnias.
She has conducted several pharmacologic trials with a special interest in neuropsychopharmacology and drug side effects and interaction.
She is the author of over 100 scientific papers, three books and several chapters in leading scientific publications on sleep and neurological disorders. She has organized and chaired several symposia in international meetings around the world and enjoys traveling and teaching her students and residents.
Roselyne Rijsman, MD
Medical Director
Center of Sleep and Wake Disorders
Haaglanden Medical Centre
The Hague, The Netherlands
Roselyne Rijsman is a neurologist and somnologist since 2006. She is currently the medical director of the Centre of Sleep and Wake disorders as well as Chairman of the department of Neurology in de Haaglanden Medical Centre, The Hague. Dr. Rijsman has a special clinical and research interest in sleep-related movement disorders including periodic limb movements and RLS. She is one of the founders, and a former president of the medical advisory board of the Restless Legs Syndrome Foundation in the Netherlands. She has also been the president of the working group on sleep and wake disorders of the Dutch national Society. Dr. Rijsman is also a member of the international RLS study group and secretary of the European RLS study group.