President’s Corner:

By: Rafael Pelayo, MD

Thank you to all of you that attended our annual meeting in Sacramento.  For those of you who did not make it, you really missed a great time.  Please do yourself a favor and don’t miss another one.  This year was one of my favorite CSS meetings and I have heard from many attendees who felt the same.  Planning for these meetings does take the support staff and our volunteer board a full year.  The lion share of the work is done by Leigh Gallagher of Xenicus. She also puts together this newsletter.  So please thank her, we would be in a lot of trouble without her steady hand.

Meet Our New and Returning Board Members:

Dr. Elie Gottlieb is a sleep neuroscientist with over 10 years of sleep, circadian rhythm, and neuroscience research experience across academia (clinical neuroscience) and industry (Fortune 100 and startup). Currently, he leads Applied Sleep Science at SleepScore Labs, a joint venture of ResMed leveraging validated non-contact consumer sleep technology and ML-driven sleep improvement features to characterize and improve population sleep health. Prior to joining SleepScore, Dr. Gottlieb led a team of researchers at Johnson & Johnson working on the Lake Nona Life Project, a multi-general study aimed at identifying health factors that contribute to long-term health and wellness. He remains a Visiting Researcher at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and University of Melbourne in Australia where he investigates associations between cerebrovascular disease, neurodegenerative disease, and sleep-wake dysfunction. His areas of interest are in clinical sleep neuroscience, consumer sleep and health technology, big-data, behavior change science, and science communication.

I am enthused to join you at CSS as a Board of Director, in our collective effort to promote better sleep and wellness in California! Growing up in several cultures, I enjoy finding common needs across cultures, and then fostering collaboration for solutions. I was born in Taiwan and grew up in Istanbul. After boarding school on the East Coast, I attended Stanford and took Dr. Dement’s Sleep and Dreams. I then completed dental and medical school at UCSF, where I also finished oral and maxillofacial surgery residency. My long-time mentors and sleep surgery pioneers Dr. Powell and Dr. Riley led me to the Otolaryngology – Sleep Surgery fellowship at Stanford. I stayed on as faculty after the fellowship, and now as an Associate Professor of Otolaryngology and Director of the Sleep Surgery Fellowship. My clinical work focuses on a comprehensive surgical approach to OSA, founded on a continuum of care with sleep medicine. My research focuses on improving ultrasound technology for sleep care, addressing disparity in gender and ethnic outcomes of sleep surgery, and optimizing MMA and upper airway stimulation care. Most importantly, I have returned to teach Sleep and Dreams, now directed by Dr. Pelayo. “Drowsiness is still red alert!”   Stanley Y.C. Liu, MD, DDS, FACS

Robyn Woidtke, MSN-Ed, RN, RPSGT, CCSH, FAAST.  Robyn became enamored by the field of sleep in 1985.  Her entry into the sleep medicine world came through working as a sleep technologist in the neonatal field; she then worked in a number of sleep clinic administration roles.  Conducting SIDS research at Stanford was a turning point for working in the medical (sleep) device industry conducting clinical research and contributing to marketing teams to develop educational programs and patient-centered materials. She holds an MSN-Ed from Walden and a BSHS in Clinical Research Administration from The George Washington University. She has authored numerous publications and lectured on a variety of sleep-related topics.  Currently, a consultant to the sleep industry and is also the principal at Sleep for Nurses, a sleep-focused educational endeavor specifically developed for practicing nurses.

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