Brendan Cooper
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Prof Brendan Cooper is a Consultant Clinical Scientist in Respiratory Physiology at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham and also a Hon. Professor in Respiratory & Sleep Physiology at the University of Birmingham.
Prof Cooper’s clinical interests include weekly sleep apnoea clinics, leading the sleep disordered breathing service as well as a research programme which includes the evaluation of equipment, development of standards of quality for sleep disordered breathing services. His research portfolio includes a wide spectrum of respiratory physiology from the resting state to exercise and sleep.
Core Members
Richard Glover
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​Richard Glover is a clinical scientist based in the Lung Function and Sleep Department at Good Hope Hospital (University Hospitals Birmingham).
His clinical interests include working with patients requiring non-invasive positive pressure therapies for the management of sleep disordered breathing. Further interests include using research and quality improvement methodologies to improve local practice and thereby improve patient care
Max Thomas​
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Max Thomas is a clinical scientist at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital with a specialist interest in complex breathlessness, exercise physiology and sleep.
He currently leads the cardiopulmonary exercise testing service at the hospital, but he is intimately involved with services including oxygen therapy; occupational lung disease; measurement of sleep (full-polysomnography); treatment and monitoring of sleep disordered breathing; severe asthma; and interstitial lung disease. He also has a burgeoning interest in upper airway disorders and excessive dynamic airway collapse – both during exertion and sleep.
Affiliated Members
Co-Chairs
Imad Ahmed
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Dr Imad Ahmed is a Consultant in Paediatric Respiratory and Sleep Medicine at the University Hospitals of Leicester. His subspecialty interests are sleep medicine, long-term ventilation and cystic fibrosis. His additional interests include medical leadership and service transformation and he is the Children and young people clinical lead at the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland integrated care board. His main research focus areas are sleep diagnostics for children, sleep in neurodevelopmental disorders and clinical outcomes in children on long-term ventilation.
Jayne Spiller is a Lecturer in Psychology within the School of Psychology and Vision Sciences at the University of Leicester. Jayne's primary research interests include sleep in children with neurodevelopmental conditions and children born preterm. In addition, Jayne has an interest in the role of sleep on cognition and mental health, in children with and without neurodevelopmental conditions. She recently completed a British Academy/Leverhulme funded project, in which she identified a small beneficial effect of learning complex multiplication problems prior to sleep on the recall of complex multiplication problems compared with learning these problems during the daytime. Jayne has experience of assessing sleep in children using actigraphy and parent-reported questionnaires.
Core Members
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Dr Georgie Agar is Lecturer at Aston University and is experienced in conducting objective sleep research with children with ID and behaviours that challenge.
Dr Agar currently leads work on the MRC funded ‘Sleep-Impulsivity-Behaviour (SIB) Study: Examining pathways to self-harm in children with autism and intellectual disability’, which aims to improve understanding of sleep and executive functioning in relation to self-injurious behaviour in children with complex needs. Dr Agar is also interested in sleep phenotypes in rare genetic syndromes, particularly Angelman and Smith-Magenis syndromes.
Manny Bagary
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Dr Manny Bagary runs a tertiary epilepsy service in Birmingham which includes a surgical programme, VNS clinic, modified ketogenic diet service for adults and has a particular interest in mental health comorbidity in epilepsy. He is actively involved in epilepsy research and is currently involved in a number of NIHR studies evaluating novel AEDs.
Dr Bagary is an elected council member and treasurer of the ILAE-UK Chapter. He is the CRN lead for epilepsy research in the West Midlands.
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Prof Andrew Bagshaw is Professor in Imaging Neuroscience; Director of the Birmingham University Imaging Centre; and Co-Director of the Centre for Human Brain Health, at the University of Birmingham.
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His main interest is in developing and applying non-invasive neuroimaging methods to questions in clinical and behavioural neuroscience. His current work focuses on using EEG-fMRI to understand the influence of ongoing brain activity on evoked and behavioural responses, and to examine the localisation and functional significance of electrophysiological discharges in epilepsy and sleep.
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Dr Salah Basheer is an NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Institute of Mental Health, University of Nottingham. Alongside his clinical work with children and adolescents, his research interests encompass a broad spectrum of topics within child and adolescent mental health, with a particular emphasis on understanding the complexities and co-occurrence of conditions such as ADHD, autism spectrum disorders, and learning difficulties.
Currently, Dr Basheer is working on research investigating the interplay between ADHD and sleep difficulties, and how these factors collectively influence the emotional and psychological wellbeing of children and young people. His work seeks to deepen the understanding of how neurodevelopmental profiles can shape mental health trajectories, with the aim of informing early and effective interventions.
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Anthony Bloxham
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Dr Bloxham is a Psychology lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, where he is part of the small but growing Sleep Research Group. Anthony’s main research interests pertain to the nature and experience of dreaming, and how the process of dreaming might be connected to memory consolidation processes that take place during sleep. Anthony completed his PhD in Lincoln, which was an investigation of this topic, and the highlight of my research there was an overnight Targeted Memory Reactivation study which also sampled dream reports, attempting to reactivate memories of recently learned experiences in dream content.
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Dr George Balanos is Lecturer in Exercise Physiology, at the School of Sport, Excersice and Rehabilitation Excercise, at the University of Birmingham. ​
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His main research interests include the regulation of blood flow in humans both during exercise and in disease, and the regulation of breathing, especially sleep disordered breathing.
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Dr Stacey Bissell is Assistant Professor at the School of Psychology, at the University of Birmingham.
From 2014 – 2018, Stacey was co-funded by Cerebra and the Tuberous Sclerosis Association to explore behaviours in children with tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) at the Cerebra Centre for Neurodevelopmental Disorders. Currently, Dr Bisell's aims to investigate the association between sleep problems and daytime externalising behaviours in children with TSC using actigraphy and mobile app technology.
Natalie Blyth
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Natalie Blyth is a highly specialised paediatric sleep and respiratory physiologist within the Childrens Respiratory Physiology department at Leicester Royal Infirmary. Natalie started working as a physiologist in both adult and paediatrics as part of the STP programme. After successfully qualifying as a clinical physiologist, she specialised in paediatrics and is now working to complete the HSST with a focus on sleep and ventilation. Her research interests include paediatric sleep diagnostics and therapeutics.
Daljinder Chalmers
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Dr Daljinder Chalmers is a chartered psychologist and a HCPC registered health psychologist based at Keele university. She completed her MPhil/PhD in sleep medicine and respiratory diseases in 2010 and went onto to complete her professional doctorate in health psychology focussing on sleep in women with nocturia in 2024. She has extensive clinical and academic experience in sleep health and how chronic conditions affect sleep in patients. She is interested in exploring how individuals manage everyday sleep related issues and is keen to educate both lay people and clinicians on the importance of good sleep hygiene. Daljinder has experience of using sleep diaries, actigraphs and using polysomnography as part of her methods to measure sleep.
Felix Chan
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Dr. Felix Chan is an Assistant Professor in Pharmacology at the Department of Pharmacy, School of Health Sciences in University of Birmingham. Our main research interest is in rare epilepsy and neurodevelopmental conditions. We are interested in the impact of genetic mutations on 24-hour body rhythm (circadian rhythm), brain function, and activity; ultimately resulting in impairment in sleep, mental health, and other comorbidities. Our research group employs an interdisciplinary approach to sleep research; with work happening at molecular level in the lab and human study with neuropsychology work and assessment in patient groups that we work with.
Brendan Cooper
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Prof Brendan Cooper is a Consultant Clinical Scientist in Respiratory Physiology at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham and also a Hon. Professor in Respiratory & Sleep Physiology at the University of Birmingham.
Prof Cooper’s clinical interests include weekly sleep apnoea clinics, leading the sleep disordered breathing service as well as a research programme which includes the evaluation of equipment, development of standards of quality for sleep disordered breathing services. His research portfolio includes a wide spectrum of respiratory physiology from the resting state to exercise and sleep.
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Robert trained as a circadian biologist and a period in Biotech. Dr Robert Dallmann has established his group at Warwick Medical School in 2015 where he is now Associate Professor in the Division of Biomedical Science and part of a multi-disciplinary circadian community. His group is interested in how the circadian clock modulates human physiology and disruption of the clock is associated with human disease. Particularly relevant in the context of the Midlands Sleep Group, we focus on developing new assays to determine the status of the circadian clock in patient bio-samples because the clock has been shown to be a predictor of disease as well as a potential target for treatment. Thus, a bio-molecular biomarker of central or peripheral clock function has high potential to translate long-known fundamental circadian biology into clinical benefit.
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Dr Tahera Doctor is a Consultant Respiratory Paediatrician at the University Hospitals of Leicester. During her training she undertook a clinical fellowship at Evelina Children’s Hospital London which is one of the few tertiary sleep centres for paediatric sleep in UK. She is a fellow of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. Her subspecialty interests are long-term ventilation, sleep medicine and complex respiratory conditions.
Dr Tahera’s research interests include paediatric sleep related breathing disorders, relationship between preterm birth and sleep in children and non-respiratory sleep disorders. She is particularly interested in research of impact of sleep on neurodevelopment and cognition and paediatric sleep diagnostics.
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Ashleigh Filtness is a Professor of Transport Human Factors and Sleep Science at Loughborough University Transport Safety Research Centre (UK).
She is fascinated by sleepiness and fatigue and their impact on safety. She completed her PhD in 2011 investigating Obstructive Sleep Apnoea and Day Time Driver Sleepiness supervised by Dr Louise Reyner and Prof Jim Horne. From 2011 to 2016 Ashleigh worked in Australia, first at Monash University Accident Research Centre (2011-13) then the Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety – Queensland at QUT (2013-16). Since returning to Loughborough in 2016 Ashleigh has developed her own research programme seeking to understand the situations which contribute to sleepiness and how these can best be managed to reduce the impact on safety. Over her career Ashleigh has authored over 90 peer-reviewed publications and attracted research funding in excess of £3.3 million. She is a Chartered Biologist and a member of the Department for Transport College of Experts.
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Professor Bärbel Finkenstädt is a Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Warwick.
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She has a track record of achievement in interdisciplinary research in Statistics. Her main areas of interest are time series analysis where she has worked extensively on statistical methods for systems biology and medicine, during the last decade with particular emphasis on modelling circadian oscillations both in the molecular genetic circuitry as well as in daily behaviour of individuals. Her current focus is on analysing data from actimetry and wearable sensors to infer about the state of the circadian timing system in individuals including shift workers and cancer patients. Her aim is to develop statistical methodology to solve a challenge of personalized circadian medicine, through providing real-time information on circadian rhythms in individual patients.
Richard Glover
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​Richard Glover is a clinical scientist based in the Lung Function and Sleep Department at Good Hope Hospital (University Hospitals Birmingham).
His clinical interests include working with patients requiring non-invasive positive pressure therapies for the management of sleep disordered breathing. Further interests include using research and quality improvement methodologies to improve local practice and thereby improve patient care
Andrew Hall
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Dr. Andrew Hall graduated from Cambridge University in 1986 and University College London in 1989. His training included acute general medicine, chest medicine and cardiology in Ipswich, neurology & neurosurgery in Cambridge and anaesthesia & intensive care in Leicester and Nottingham. He was appointed Consultant in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine at Leicester Royal Infirmary in 1999. Dr Hall subsequently developed an interest in sleep medicine. In 2004, he joined the team at Leicester General Hospital, one of the first sleep laboratories in the UK. From 2007-2021 he was Head of Service for Adult Sleep Medicine at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust. He led and grew a department of 5 physicians and 6 technologists. He has previously served as both Secretary and Treasurer to the British Sleep Society. His research interests and recent publications relate to obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) and metabolic medicine, chronotype and metabolic medicine, the perioperative management of patients with OSA and aspects of other sleep disorders such as insomnia and narcolepsy.
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Dr Iuliana Hartescu is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Loughborough University. With 12 years’ research experience in the area of sleep health and physical activity, Iuliana has expertise in the delivery of behavioural intervention for improved sleep health, the authorship and administration of digital health interventions, as well as the epidemiology of daytime health-related behaviours and sleep outcomes.
Caroline Horton
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Professor Caroline Horton has been researching sleep and dreaming in relation to memory and cognition for twenty years. She is the Director of the DrEAMSLab, the Co-Director of the Lincoln Sleep Research Centre, and holds a range of elected external posts, including Treasurer and Trustee of the British Sleep Society and committee member for the Cognitive Section, and the Division of Health Psychology (both of the BPS). Caroline supports The Sleep Charity, particularly the Lincs Sleep Hub project.
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Whilst most of Caroline’s interests concern mentation and cognition during sleep, she has more recently become a passionate advocate of public health initiatives to support healthy sleep for all, and has developed the Sleep Well Programme to address that.
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Syed Huq
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​Dr Syed Huq is a consultant respiratory and sleep physician based at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham. During the final year of his specialty training he undertook a clinical fellowship at the Papworth sleep centre, one of the largest tertiary sleep services in the UK. He also obtained the European Somnologist accreditation in sleep medicine in September 2016, and the Registered Polysmonographic Technologist accreditation in sleep study reporting in May 2017. He is one of the core members of the cross-site multi-disciplinary sleep team at UHB providing a comprehensive sleep service for respiratory and non-respiratory sleep disorders. He is also involved with acute and domiciliary home ventilation service at QEHB.
Shyam Madathil
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Dr Shyam Madathil is the cross site sleep medical lead for the University Hospitals Birmingham NHSF trust.
He is a Consultant in General, Respiratory and Sleep medicine and Senior clinical lecturer at the University of Birmingham. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London and has the European Diploma in Adult Respiratory Medicine and is an ESRS certified Somnologist.
His clinics care for patients with a variety of respiratory and non respiratory sleep disorders and respiratory failure.
His research interests include sleep disordered breathing and breathing disorders in inherited metabolic conditions.
Joe Madge
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Dr Joe Madge leads the paediatric respiratory and sleep physiology service at Leicester Children's Hospital, where they provide a range of routine and complex respiratory investigations. Clinically, Joe has a keen interest in the diagnosis of infant and paediatric sleep disordered breathing as well as the management of complex children requiring ventilatory support.
Joe's previous sleep research involvement has looked at how equipment may impact the outcomes of diagnosing sleep disordered breathing in children and their management.
Dr Ksenija da Silva is an Assistant Professor in Cognitive Neuropsychology at Coventry University and a mental health and neuroscience cross-cutting theme lead.
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Her main interest is in applying and evaluating non-invasive brain stimulation in clinical and community settings. Currently, she is researching the role of different stimulation treatments in modulating sleep in people with severe mental health diagnoses and insomnia. Apart from the psychological outcomes, she uses actigraphy and EEG to understand the underlying mechanisms.
Sam Mostafa​
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Dr. Sam Mostafa is a clinical consultant in diabetes medicine and weight management at University Hospitals of Birmingham.
His research interests are in pre-diabetes and prevention of type 2 diabetes and obesity, after he undertook a Novo Nordisk Research Foundation PhD on these themes at the University of Leicester. This was followed by a clinical lectureship at Diabetes Trials Unit, University of Oxford, where he explored risks of complications of type 2 diabetes. Since joining the Birmingham team, Sam is exploring the role of general sleep health as a possible risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes. His longer term aim is to explore the role of sleep manipulation in diabetes prevention
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Dr Isabel Morales-Muñoz is Assistant Professor in Psychology, at the Institute for Mental Health (IMH), School of Psychology, at the University of Birmingham.
Dr Morales-Muñoz´s main research interests lie within the field of sleep, neuropsychology and youth mental health. Her current research focuses on sleep development in early childhood and the links with neurodevelopmental disorders; in addition to understand the role of sleep in the development of mental health and health-related problems.
Talar Moukhtarian
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Dr Talar Moukhtarian is an assistant professor (research-track) at the Warwick Medical School (WMS), University of Warwick.
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With a PhD in Clinical Psychopathology, her research interests lie in the differential diagnosis, assessment, and treatment of mental health conditions. Her earlier research focused on adult ADHD, borderline personality disorder and transdiagnostic nosology across mental health conditions. More recently her focus has been in preventative care and early interventions for mental health problems in a sustainable and scalable manner, and the development and initial testing of workplace-based psychological interventions for a range of common disorders, including insomnia, depression, and anxiety.
Louise Organista
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Louise is an advanced prescribing pharmacist working within a multidisciplinary frailty team at Royal Derby Hospital. She graduated from Queen's University Belfast in 2013 and has had a career in hospital pharmacy which has led to her current role. She has a holistic approach to managing patients and focuses on optimising medications as well as non-pharmacological care interventions (in particular, discussing sleep). She is also a guest lecturer at University of Nottingham, teaching pharmacy undergraduates about frailty and medicines optimisation. In house, she teaches non medical prescribers and medics on insomnia and management of sleep in the older patient. She co-chairs the British Geriatrics Society Pharmacy Group, and has written for their quarterly publication, AGENDA, on the same topic.
Bhamini Patel
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Dr Bhamini Patel is a newly qualified Consultant General Adult Psychiatrist, with an endorsement in Liaison Psychiatry. She completed her Higher Training in the West Midlands. She is interested in general neuropsychiatry, with a sub-specialty interest in sleep medicine, and she is currently completing a PGCert in Sleep Medicine through the University of the West of England. She is achieving the associated competencies through clinical placements at The Barberry, BSMHFT, UHB and University College London.
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Dr. Fran Pilkington-Cheney is a Lecturer in Psychology and Sleep at the School of Social Sciences, Nottingham Trent University (NTU).
Dr Pilkington-Cheney’s primary research interests are in the measurement, management and mitigation of sleepiness and fatigue during safety critical tasks (e.g., when driving, during shift work). She is also interested in the effect of sleep on cognitive functioning and day-to-day life (including women’s health), transport safety, human behaviour and both applied and experimental research. Dr Pilkington-Cheney is the Co-Investigator and Project Manager of a 3yr Road Safety Trust grant (SleepiEST, 2023-2026) exploring driver sleepiness in shift workers and using this data to develop a sleepiness-risk estimation and prediction tool. Dr Pilkington-Cheney is also chair of the Early Career Researcher Network for the European Sleep Research Society (2022-2024).
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Prof Caroline Richards is Professor in Neurodevelopmental Disorders, at the School of Psychology, at the University of Birmingham.
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The aim of Dr Richards’ research is to reduce negative clinical outcomes for individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders. Her work with children with autism and children with rare genetic syndromes has thus far focused on reducing self-injury, improving sleep disorders and understanding the impact of premature birth.
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Dr Monisha gained her Masters degree in Physiotherapy (2016) at Sri Ramakrishna College of Physiotherapy, Tamilnadu Dr.MGR Medical University, India followed by a PhD from the SRM Institute of Science and Technology (2022). Monisha’s PhD work focused on the development and validation of assessment tool for the diagnosis of children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). Monisha also worked as an assistant professor in SRM College of Physiotherapy, where her research activities were focused in the area of DCD, with a particular interest in rehabilitation.
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Monisha joined Loughborough University as a Research Associate in Health, the Environment and Sleep in March 2023. Monisha works part of a multi-disciplinary team of psychologists, engineers and experts in user-centered design and health at Loughborough University, which will examine the impact of heatwaves and the bedroom thermal environment on sleep and wellbeing.
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One of Monisha’s research areas focussed on development and validation of assessment tool and investigating the physiological impact of sleep deprivation in school children with smart phone addiction. Monisha’s current research interests include the impact of environmental factors on sleep quality and well-being in the UK population.
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Laura is a Professor of Chronobiology at Coventry University. She is a biochemist by training and is interested the molecular aspects of biological timekeeping in plant and human systems and understanding the role of sleep in our physical and mental health. She is currently a co-investigator on a Wellcome Trust-funded multi-site, multi-disciplinary, international project (2023-2028) investigating sleep and circadian mechanisms underlying the development of adolescent depression and anxiety.
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Dr Alex Scott is a Lecturer in Psychology at Keele University. Dr Scott’s interests broadly include the transdiagnostic role sleep plays in the experience of mental health difficulties. Specifically, research aiming to understand mechanisms of action that might explain how sleep exerts an effect on mental health, implementing evidenced based interventions designed to improve sleep into routine health settings, and how we might make digital cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia less prone to non-engagement and attrition.
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​Dr Andrew Surtees is Associate Professor in Psychology, at the School of Psychology, at the University of Birmingham.
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Dr Surtees is an expert in social cognition, autism and mental health. He combines cutting-edge research on social understanding in typical and atypical populations with practice as a Clinical Psychologist. He is interested in the impact of sleep deprivation on social cognition and in the impact of social difficulties on sleep.
Prof Nicole Tang is a registered clinical and health psychologist with extensive research experience in sleep, insomnia, chronic pain and mental health. She is currently Professor of Psychology at the University of Warwick.
Prof Tang is the Director of the Warwick Sleep and Pain Laboratory and Academic Lead of the Warwick Health Global Research Priority Mental Health Theme. She leads a range of projects, from experimental studies to qualitative studies; from meta-analysis, secondary data analysis, experience sampling studies, to multi-centre randomised controlled trials. The ultimate goal of her research is to build an all-round evidence base to inform treatment development.
Dr Kristy Themelis is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology, at Nottingham Trent University. Her research explores the intricate relationship between biopsychosocial factors and the development and persistence of chronic pain, its co-occurrence with mental health comorbidities, and suicide risk. She works with diverse and multidisciplinary teams using a range of novel methods and techniques with the overall aim of delivering tangible, positive impacts on the quality of life of individuals with chronic long-term conditions. More recently, her focus has been on personalised approaches to health care and management, employing real-time data and biomarkers to inform tailored treatment plans that respond to an individual's specific needs and fluctuations in pain, sleep, and mental health.
Max Thomas​
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Max Thomas is a clinical scientist at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital with a specialist interest in complex breathlessness, exercise physiology and sleep.
He currently leads the cardiopulmonary exercise testing service at the hospital, but he is intimately involved with services including oxygen therapy; occupational lung disease; measurement of sleep (full-polysomnography); treatment and monitoring of sleep disordered breathing; severe asthma; and interstitial lung disease. He also has a burgeoning interest in upper airway disorders and excessive dynamic airway collapse – both during exertion and sleep.
Simon Wharton​
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Dr Simon Wharton is a specialist in Respiratory Medicine at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital (UHB).
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Dr Wharton qualified as a respiratory physician but after being appointed consultant at QMC Nottingham, he became increasingly interested in Sleep Medicine. Heartlands Hospital has a full sleep laboratory so he moved to Birmingham in 2014 to pursue his interest. His major interests are non-respiratory sleep disorders.
Prof Yates is Director of the Leicester Lifestyle and Health Research Group and co-lead of the Lifestyle theme within the NIHR Leicester Biomedical Research Centre where ongoing research is investigating how physical behaviours, from sleep to physical activity and nutrition, can be used as therapies in the prevention and management of obesity and chronic disease. This includes exploring interactions with pharmacotherapies. Prof Yates has published over 300 articles (Google Scholar H-index = 75) and holds several prestigious research grants, including £14M in new investment from Research England through the Expanding Excellence in England Award
Dr Eder Zavala is an applied mathematician and Assistant Professor at the centre for Systems Modelling & Quantitative Biomedicine at the University of Birmingham. His work focuses on interdisciplinary research spanning mathematics, computational and biomedical sciences. Eder investigates the dynamic regulation of stress hormones and their interaction with metabolism, fertility, sleep and inflammation. His focus is to develop a mathematical understanding of endocrine regulation that includes rhythmic hormone secretion, responses to perturbations, and long-term physio-pathological changes. Eder is also interested in developing computational biomarkers from wearable device data that signal abnormality in hormonal rhythms more efficiently than current single time point analyses, supporting personalised diagnosis and clinical interventions.
Dr Zumer explores how the brain pieces together and processes relevant information whilst ignoring distraction. With a background in neuroimaging methods development, she now uses neuroimaging (MEG, EEG and fMRI) to study the brain's activity during attention -demanding tasks, including with visual or audio-visual sensory information. Dr Zumer aims to uncover how the neural mechanisms are altered in cases of disorders or disturbances of attention and/or perception, such as in ADHD or sleep disturbance. Dr Zumer is currently supervising two PhD students, one of whom is studying 'local sleeps' during wakeful attention tasks in children, including how these 'local sleeps' may interact with ADHD symptoms and sleep quality.
Affiliated Members
Thomas Bilterys
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Dr Thomas Bilterys is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Warwick and Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He started his Marie SkÅ‚odowska-Curie Actions – COFUND EUTOPIA Science and Innovation Fellowship at Warwick University in October 2023.
Thomas completed his PhD in health science from Ghent University and Rehabilitation Sciences from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 2022. After his PhD, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the Pain in Motion Research Group at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the Sleep Disorders and Research Center at Henry Ford Health. His research mainly aims to increase insight into the interaction between sleep and pain and to improve the treatment of insomnia and chronic pain. His current research focuses on insomnia in people with chronic pain and possible treatment adaptations which consider the sleep-pain relationship to further enhance treatment.
Kate Bosak
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Kate Bosak was awarded a Psychology PhD studentship at Nottingham Trent University, beginning October 2023. Here, she will explore sleep after catastrophic injury, under the supervision of Professor John Groeger and Dr Fran Pilkington-Cheney.
Kate graduated with a first-class Honours Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from NTU in 2022. After graduating, Kate worked at NTU as the development manager for Sleep Well Science – a sleep assessment and remediation service for individuals who have sustained injury.
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Her research interests include sleep after catastrophic injury – its relationship with recovery, medication use, fatigue, sleep disorders, and pain, across different injury classes – spinal, head, limb, etc.
Bethan Cornick
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Bethan Cornick is a Research Assistant at Aston University. She primarily works on a project investigating the effect of enclosed bed designs on sleep, wellbeing and behaviour in children with intellectual disability and their caregivers.
Before working at Aston University, Bethan completed an undergraduate in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford.
Sue Cross
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I started my PhD in Oct 2024, at the School of Sports Exercise and Rehabilitation Science, Birmingham University, investigating the potential of intermittent hypoxia to increase the neural drive to breathe in people with Spinal Cord Injury (SCI). I plan to include Sleep measures to see if people with OSA are more or less responsive to intermittent hypoxia. I am a physiotherapist, and I worked in the National Spinal Injuries Unit at Stoke Mandeville for over 25 years. My introduction to Sleep medicine came as part of the COSAQ research team lead by David Berlowitz investigating OSA in newly injured tetraplegic patients. I went on to complete the MSc in Sleep Medicine at Oxford University. I worked for a year at UCLH with Dr Hugh Selsick as a therapist delivering CBTi, before moving to Papworth to work on sleep research projects with Dr Tim Quinnell.
Sophie Fletcher
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Sophie Fletcher is a Research Assistant at the Warwick Medical School (WMS), University of Warwick.
Sophie’s research interests broadly focus on mental health and wellbeing interventions within non-clinical settings. This stemmed from her work on the Mental Health & Productivity Pilot programme (MHPP), where she delivered CBT-I to individuals across the Midlands region through a workplace wellbeing intervention. In line with her earlier research interests in body image and eating disorders, Sophie is also interested in exploring whether similar models of intervention delivery can be implemented in alternative non-clinical settings. As such, Sophie is also working with colleagues from the Universities of Warwick and Sheffield to explore whether a CBT-based intervention for eating disorders can be delivered to young people via the school setting.
Rory O'Sullivan
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Rory O’Sullivan is a Doctoral Researcher at the Richards Lab, University of Birmingham. He began his PhD in 2021 after graduating from Loughborough University with an undergraduate degree in Psychology. His work is supervised by Dr Caroline Richards, Prof Andrew Bagshaw and Dr Stacey Bissell.
Rory’s research aims to: 1) explore interactions between sleep and daytime variables (e.g. behaviours that challenge, health problems, adaptive functioning) in children with rare genetic syndromes; and 2) understand the properties of sleep and daytime outcome measures in children with neurodevelopmental disorders.
Michaela Pawley
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Michaela was awarded a Psychology Departmental PhD Fellowship at the University of Warwick which she started in October 2022. She graduated from the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands, with a first-class Honours Psychology bachelor’s degree before completing the Clinical Psychology Master of Research program at the University of Birmingham focusing on emotion regulation in adolescence. Michaela’s current research is supervised by Professor Nicole Tang, Dr Isabel Morales-Muñoz and Professor Andrew Bagshaw.
Michaela’s research has the primary aim of better understanding the mechanisms that contribute to the relationship between sleep and mental health during adolescence. This is driven by her joint interests in research as well as clinical intervention work.
Rui Pereira
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Dr Rui Pereira is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Birmingham, currently working on a project addressing the impact of sleep deprivation in social functioning, supervised by Dr Andrew Surtees.
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Rui completed his PhD in sleep psychology and sport from Loughborough University, in 2022. Rui was awarded a doctoral studentship in 2018 and undertook his PhD at the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences. Rui's doctoral work characterised the sleep of elite athletes and addressed the relationship between daytime napping and insomnia.
Miriam Shabetai
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Miriam is a Doctoral Research Student in the SHINE Lab, Aston University. She started her PhD in 2024 after graduating from Aston University with a masters in Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Her work is supervised by Dr Georgie Agar, Dr Jo Tarver, and Prof Rebecca Knibb.
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Miriam’s PhD aims to develop a novel self-reported sleep questionnaire and sleep diary for adolescents aged 12-18 years with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities.
Peter To
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Peter TO, who has been awarded the Chancellor’s International Scholarship, is a Ph.D. student in Psychology at the University of Warwick under the supervision of Prof. Nicole Tang and Dr. Mark Elliott. Previously, he completed his bachelor’s degree in Counselling & Psychology with a first-class honour at Hong Kong Shue Yan University.
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Peter’s Ph.D. topic aims to investigate the daily associations between sleep quality, pain-related outcomes, and objectively measured physical activities (i.e., accelerometers) among individuals with chronic pain.
Amber Tout
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Dr Amber Tout is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Warwick.
Amber completed her Psychology PhD at the University of Sussex in 2023, where her research focused on investigating the relationships between positive psychological traits (e.g., mindfulness, self-compassion, gratitude, optimism), cognitive emotion regulation, and good sleep quality and quantity. She also explored the utility of an optimism intervention as a means to improve sleep outcomes in a student population. More recently, Amber joined the Mental Health and Wellbeing Unit at the University of Warwick, where she is helping to co-develop a new sleep management program for shift workers and their employers.