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Elena Richert

With my Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Master’s degree in Neurocognitive Psychology, as well as my working experience in a sleep clinic and different departments at universities as a student assistant, I have a very interdisciplinary and versatile background: Next to my experience in the development and administration of neurocognitive tests in clinical and non-clinical settings,  I learned about machine learning, computational neuroscience, psychopharmacology, molecular genetics, women’s health and even worked with different animal models throughout my studies. It might not be obvious at first glance, but all these fields are connected to sleep in some way or the other. 

What makes sleep so interesting to me is not only that it can be studied from so many different perspectives, but particularly the unknown. Considering that we spend around 1/3 of our lives sleeping, I find it very surprising how little we know about sleep and its link to other aspects of our lives to this day. Here, I am especially interested in how sleep is affecting our cognitive functioning and mental health, the neural correlates, how sleep is connected to neurodegenerative disorders, and the link between sleep and the menstrual cycle. In short, my main interest is translational sleep research. 

Research Interests

Teaching