The content within this Center has been reviewed by the following sleep experts:

Jack D. Edinger, PhD

Jack D. Edinger, Ph.D. is an insomnia researcher and clinician. He earned his MS and PhD degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA and completed a psychology internship at the University of Alabama/Birmingham. He currently is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, Division of Medical Psychology at Duke University Medical Center, and serves as the Senior Psychologist for the VA Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. He is certified in behavioral sleep medicine by the AASM, and has over 24 years of clinical and research experience with insomnia and other sleep-disordered patients. A member of professional organizations such as the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, The Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, and the American Psychological Association, Dr. Edinger recently served on the AASM ICSD Revision Committee, and the AASM Behavioral Sleep Medicine Committee. He currently is serving on the Board of the American Insomnia Association. He recently served as the Chair of the Work Group charged with development of Insomnia Research Diagnostic Criteria. He is a prolific clinical researcher who currently has approximately 200 publications in the form of journal articles, abstracts, and book chapters, and most of these pertain to the evaluation and treatment of insomnia and related sleep disorders. Case series studies conducted by Dr. Edinger and colleagues are among the earliest articles published that describe the efficacy of multi-component Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for treating insomnia complaints. He currently has active funding from NIMH and NIAMS to support his diagnostic and treatment research pertaining to insomnia.

Charles M. Morin, PhD

Charles Morin is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Sleep Research Center at the Univeristé Laval in Quebec City. He currently holds a Canada Research Chair on Sleep Disorders. His research program focuses on the development, validation, and dissemination of insomnia treatments, and on the epidemiology, risk factors, and morbidity of insomnia. His research is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Dr. Morin is Associate Editor for the journals SLEEP and Behavioral Sleep Medicine. He has published four books and over 100 articles and book chapters. He is chairing a Task Force of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine to update practice parameters for the behavioral treatment of insomnia. Dr. Morin is a past President of the Canadian Sleep Society and a past recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology from the American Psychological Association.

Michael L. Perlis, PhD

Dr. Perlis is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Rochester, Member of the Neurosciences Program, Director of the UR Sleep Research Laboratory and Director of the UR Behavioral Sleep Medicine Service.

His areas of expertise include sleep in psychiatric disorders and neurocognitive phenomena in insomnia, the mechanisms of action of sedative hypnotics and the development of alternative treatments for insomnia. His clinical expertise is in the area of Behavioral Sleep Medicine and he is the principle author of the first text book in this field (Treating Sleep Disorders: The Principles and Practice of Behavioral Sleep Medicine, Wiley & Sons). He has authored or co-authored a variety of papers and chapters on the assessment and treatment of sleep disorders and published more than 35 empirical or theoretical papers on sleep related topics.

In addition to his academic endeavors, he has served as Assistant Director of Training for the SRS (1996-2000) and as the founding editor of the SRS & AASM Training Opportunities in Sleep Research and Sleep Medicine Manual. Dr. Perlis is currently a member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine Presidential Committee on Behavioral Sleep Medicine, the section chair for Behavioral Sleep Medicine, and the coordinator of the Junior Faculty in Sleep Research Interest Group.

James K. Walsh, PhD

James K. Walsh was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1950 and there attended Brother Rice High School. His undergraduate degree was earned from Lewis University near Joliet, Illinois in 1972. Dr. Walsh received his masters degree and doctorate in experimental psychology from Saint Louis University in 1978. He served as a visiting assistant professor of psychology at Illinois Institute of Technology in 1978-79, and in the fall of 1979 assumed the position of assistant director of the Sleep Disorders Center at the University of Cincinnati.

In 1981 he founded the Sleep Disorders and Research Center at Deaconess Hospital in St. Louis, where he served as director until 1993. Dr. Walsh founded the Sleep Medicine and Research Center at St. Luke’s Hospital in St. Louis in December 1993 and currently holds the position of Executive Director and Senior Scientist.

Additionally, Dr. Walsh holds the appointments of Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Saint Louis University.

Since 1975 Dr. Walsh has published over one hundred articles and book chapters dealing with sleep and its disorders. He co-authored the text Sleep: A Scientific Perspective. He has presented numerous invited lectures around the country and in Europe. Dr. Walsh has been principal investigator for more than 50 research grants and contracts. Currently, his primary research interests include pharmacological treatment of insomnia, consequences of insomnia, and the relation of sleep loss to behavior and cognitive function.