Program

Dr. Sushmita Pamidi is an Associate Professor of Medicine at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She is a respirologist and sleep physician clinician-scientist with a MSc in Epidemiology. Her expertise is in clinical and health outcomes research related to sleep-disordered breathing and cardiometabolic disease in the general population, as well as in pregnancy and after delivery. She is also Co-Chair of the Clinical Trial Unit at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre. She is the current Chair of the Planning Committee for the American Thoracic Society, SRN Assembly.

Ali Azarbarzin, PhD, is Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Lead Investigator in the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders, Departments of Medicine and Neurology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, USA.

His research focuses on advanced analysis of polysomnographic signals to better characterize the pathophysiology of sleep-disordered breathing and its cardiovascular consequences. Dr. Azarbarzin is internationally recognized for developing and validating novel physiological metrics beyond the apnea–hypopnea index, including measures of hypoxic burden, heart rate response to respiratory events, and arousal intensity/burden.

These metrics have been shown to provide superior prognostic information and to act as important effect modifiers of treatment response in both obstructive and central sleep apnea, thereby supporting precision medicine approaches in sleep medicine.

Dr. Azarbarzin has authored numerous high-impact publications in leading journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, European Heart Journal, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, and Sleep. By linking detailed sleep physiology with clinical outcomes, his work bridges diagnostics, risk stratification, and individualized therapy. At the Sleep and Breathing Symposium, he will present on the clinical relevance of novel polysomnographic metrics for guiding treatment of obstructive and central sleep apnea.

Claire Arnaud is a Research Director at Inserm in Grenoble, working at the HP2 laboratory on the cardiovascular consequences of sleep-disordered breathing. Her research focuses on chronic intermittent hypoxia (IH), the hallmark feature of obstructive sleep apnea, and its consequences on the cardiovascular system.

Using experimental and translational models, her work aims to better understand how IH induces both adaptive and maladaptive cardiovascular responses, particularly in the context of ischemic heart disease. Her current research places a strong emphasis on autonomic dysregulation as a key mechanism linking IH to cardiac remodeling, myocardial injury and progression toward heart failure, together with oxidative stress, inflammation and metabolic disturbances.

Through these studies, she seeks to contribute to a better understanding of why sleep apnea worsens cardiovascular outcomes and to help identify potential targets to limit hypoxia-induced cardiac damage.

Prof. Martino Pengo graduated in Medicine at University of Padua where he completed his training in Internal Medicine. During his residency he started conducting clinical research studies in the field of cardiovascular prevention and arterial hypertension. He then moved to the UK for a fellowship at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust/King's College London where he managed to expand his research and clinical interests to the interactions between sleep/sleep disorders and cardiovascular disease. He successfully completed the Expert Somnologist examination issued by the European Society of Sleep Research. In 2016 he completed the International PhD program on “Arterial hypertension and vascular biology". He moved back to Italy as he was appointed consultant physician in Cardiology and Sleep Medicine, senior researcher at the Department of Cardiology, IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano (Milano) and Associate Professor at University of Milano-Bicocca. 

Dr. Mehra is a physician scientist dedicated to investigating sleep disorders and their impact on cardiopulmonary disease. She is Division Head of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, Professor of Medicine with tenure and A. Bruce Montgomery, MD, American Lung Association Endowed Chair in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Washington. She has served as Chair of NIH Workshops, Chair of the inaugural 2022 American Heart Association statement on sleep apnea and cardiac arrhythmia, Chair of American Association of Academy of Sleep Medicine Inpatient Sleep Apnea Management task force, Associate Editor of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine and sole author of Up to Date: Obstructive sleep apnea and cardiovascular disease in adults for over 10 years. She has authored over 240 peer-reviewed publications and is an inducted member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation.

Dr. Sanjay R. Patel is a professor of medicine and epidemiology at University of Pittsburgh and sleep physician at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). He leads the Center for Sleep and Cardiovascular Outcomes Research at the University of Pittsburgh as well as severing as director of the UPMC Comprehensive Sleep Disorders program. He completed his clinical training in sleep medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and received a master’s degree in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Patel’s research has focused on the bi-directional interactions between sleep health and obesity. He has published extensively on the role of insufficient sleep and poor sleep health as an independent risk factor for obesity and accelerated weight gain while also evaluating the impact of obesity interventions in the management of obstructive sleep apnea.  He co-chaired the 2018 American Thoracic Society guidelines on the role of weight management in the treatment of patients with sleep apnea and is currently co-chairing an updated guideline document.

Dr. T. Douglas Bradley completed his medical degree at the University of Alberta in Edmonton in 1978 then went on to complete residency training at the University of Toronto, and post-graduate research training at the University of Toronto and McGill University. He is Professor of Medicine and is the former Director of the Sleep Research Laboratories of the University Health Network, and the University of Toronto’s Division of Respirology. His clinical and research work focuses on the relationship between sleep apnea and cardiovascular diseases, with a particular focus on the role of fluid retention and overnight rostral fluid shift in the pathogenesis  of obstructive and central sleep apnea in heart failure. More recently, he has focused on the treatment of sleep apnea in heart failure, which culminated in the completion of the ADVENT-HF Trial. Dr. Bradley has published over 290 papers and book chapters on sleep apnea and related topics. He is a member of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and is the recipient of the 2018 Canadian Thoracic Society Honorary Lecture Award for clinical and research contributions in the field of sleep-disordered breathing and the 2021 Canadian Institutes of Health Research/Canadian Sleep Society Distinguished Lecturer Award in Sleep Sciences. Dr. Bradley is also a co-inventor of a home sleep apnea diagnostic device that that has as received FDA and Health Canada clearance for clinical use in the United States and Canada.

Associate Professor Mathias Baumert is an IEEE Fellow and leads the Biomedical Engineering discipline at the University of Adelaide. He received his PhD from the Technical University of Ilmenau, Germany, in 2005, and has been awarded fellowships from the Australian Research Council, including an Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship and an Australian Research Fellowship, as well as a Career Development Award from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia.

His research focuses on biomedical signal processing for the development of digital biomarkers and the translation of these novel methodologies into clinical practice, with particular emphasis on sleep and cardiovascular health. He has authored more than 130 peer-reviewed publications spanning sleep research, biomedical engineering, cardiology, physiology, and neuroscience, which have been cited over 8,600 times according to Google Scholar.

He serves as Executive Editor of Biomedical Signal Processing and Control and is a member of the Editorial Board of the Proceedings of the IEEE.