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Hans P.A. Van Dongen Dr. Hans Van Dongen is research associate professor of sleep and chronobiology in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. As an undergraduate, he studied astrophysics at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Even though he obtained a Master’s degree in this field, it was not his calling to look at the stars at night. Instead, he ended up studying people’s sleep, as he worked towards a Ph.D. degree in Chronobiology and Sleep at Leiden University. In his dissertation, he demonstrated that the sleep behavior of “owls” and “larks” (morning- and evening-types) is not a consequence of differences in personality, as was commonly believed, but rather the result of systematic differences in these individuals’ biological clock. Inter-individual differences would become a common theme in the research studies to follow. When he joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in 1999, Dr. Van Dongen had become interested in why some individuals can resist the effects of sleep deprivation so much better than others. He received funding from NASA and the NIH to study this issue with laboratory experiments. In a recently published paper*, Dr. Van Dongen raised the question, Why is it that the average individual needs about one-third of the day for sleep, despite all the wonderful things that can be done during wakefulness? In a series of experiments conducted in the laboratory of Dr. David Dinges at the University of Pennsylvania, chronically sleep-restricted research subjects showed increasing wear and tear on waking brain functions. The level of cognitive impairment was proportional to the amount of additional wakefulness, regardless of what happened with sleep. Van Dongen argued that this finding indicates sleep may serve to protect human beings from being awake too long. Still, he believes there must be more to sleep and dreams—providing endless inspiration for further study. A member of the Center for Sleep and Respiratory Neurobiology, the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior, and the David Mahoney Institute of Neurological Sciences, Dr. Van Dongen’s current research projects are highly interdisciplinary, involving fields ranging from psychology to biomedicine to mathematics. He also supervises students and trainees from a variety of backgrounds who come to work on these projects. The latest such project involves the development of a biomathematical model of sleep and fatigue in astronauts, taking Van Dongen a little closer to the stars after all. Dr. Van Dongen is also actively involved in the ethics of research on human subjects in the social and behavioral sciences, and serves as the chair of the University of Pennsylvania’s Institutional Review Board for the social and behavioral sciences. In his spare time, Van Dongen is an amateur tenor vocalist. One of his favorite pieces is Charles Gounod’s “Aubade”. ________________________
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Topic
Faculty Directors 2003-2004, Belief 2002-2003, The Book 2001-2002, Time 2000-2001, Style 1999-2000, Human Nature
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