2015 Awards

Early Career Distinguished Achievement

Awarded to a member of SBSM who is less than 8 years post PhD/MD degree and who has made significant scientific contributions to behavioral sleep medicine or who has made significant clinical contributions to behavioral sleep medicine as exemplified by innovations in service delivery, dissemination, and public policy.

Awarded to Sarah Honaker, PhD, HSPP, CBSM - Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN

Dr. Sarah Honaker is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine. Currently, she works with children and families at the Riley Sleep Disorders Center, and conducts research on incorporating behavioral sleep into pediatric primary care. While her current position includes both a research and clinical focus, her previous work at The University of Louisville School of Medicine was almost solely focused on clinical care. As such, her primary contributions to date, have been in the area of clinical care and education.

SBSM Student Dissertation and Thesis Award

The Student Dissertation and Thesis Award is awarded to a student member who has provided evidence of outstanding work on his or her thesis or dissertation project by summarizing the theoretical background supporting the project, the methodological rigor, and the significance of the findings to the field of BSM.

Awarded to Jessica Dietch MS at University of North Texas

Jessica Dietch is currently a graduate student at the University of North Texas and received a Bachelor of Arts from Chapman University. Jessica’s clinical experiences include working with children, college students, and adults covering a wide range of sleep related topics. Jessica was a student member on 2013-2014 SBSM Board of Directors and is currently serving as a valued member of the SBSM Accreditation Committee.

 

APSS First Time Travel Award

Awarded to Cynthia Fellman-Couture, RN, BSN, PhD - Henry Ford Sleep Center, Detroit, MI 
Awarded to Scott Rower, PhD - Portland Psychotherapy, Portland, OR

Awarded to individuals in the first or second year of SBSM membership (full membership only, students are not eligible) who attended APSS for the first time. First time travel awardees were required to attend a BSM postgrad workshop at APSS and received a $500 award to help offset the traveling expense of attending.

2014 Awards

Peter Hauri Career Distinguished Achievement Award

Awarded to Arthur J. Spielman, Ph.D.

The Lifetime Achievement Award is to acknowledge nominees who have distinguished themselves based on professional productivity and demonstrated leadership in the sleep medicine and/or sleep research fields.

Arthur J. Spielman, Ph.D. is currently a Professor of Psychology at The City College of the City University of New York (CUNY) in the Cognitive Neuroscience doctoral subprogram. In addition, he is an Adjunct Clinical Professor of Psychology in Neurology at the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York where he serves as a Co-Director, with Ana Krieger, of the Center for Sleep Medicine. Professor Spielman received his PhD in clinical psychology at CUNY and has a subspecialty in Sleep Medicine. He is a diplomate, American Board of Sleep Medicine (ABSM; certificate #26), and certified in Behavioral Sleep Medicine (certificate #3), American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM). He was on the committees that constructed the exams for these specialty qualifications. He was a founding staff member, and later the Co-Director, of the Sleep-Wake Disorders Center at Montefiore Hospital, Bronx, New York, which was the first Sleep Disorders Center certified in the United States by the Association of Sleep Disorders Centers in 1977. He also worked in the Laboratory of Chronobiology at Montefiore under the direction of Elliot Weitzman and Charles Czeisler.

Professor Spielman has served on ten NIH review committees, was on the Board of Directors of both the AASM as well as the ABSM. He has participated with his colleagues on the editorial boards of the journals Sleep and Journal of Behavioral Sleep Medicine and on task forces and committees such as fellowship training, individual and center accreditation, examination, nosology, and non-pharmacological treatment of insomnia. He was the chair of the Institutional Review Board at City College for 15 years. Professor Spielman has received a number of awards including the Distinguished Service Award, AASM and the Helmut Schmidt Award, ABSM.

Professor Spielman has published on a wide range of sleep disorders topics with a primary focus on insomnia assessment and treatment. He co-authored a popular book on insomnia with the senior author and long time collaborator Paul Glovinsky (The Insomnia Answer, 2006). He devised a popular model of insomnia (called the 3P model which stands for Predisposing, Precipitating and Perpetuating Factors, 1986, and with colleagues in 1987) and on a widely used treatment for insomnia called Sleep Restriction Therapy (with colleagues in 1987). Ongoing work includes validation of consumer sleep monitoring devices, tongue strengthening for snoring and sleep apnea and a theoretical paper on the function of REM sleep.  

 

Young Investigator Award

Awarded to Dr. Kelly Baron

The Young Investigator Award is awarded to a member who has made significant scientific contributions to behavioral sleep medicine or who has made significant clinical contributions to behavioral sleep medicine as exemplified by innovations in service delivery, dissemination, and public policy.

Dr. Kelly Baron is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. Dr. Baron’s research interests include the role of circadian timing and alignment in obesity risk, use of exercise in the treatment of sleep disorders and treatment of comorbid insomnia and circadian rhythm sleep disorders. The emphasis of her research is to determine the biological and behavior links between circadian alignment and weight regulation and then translate her findings to the clinical setting in novel weight loss interventions. Dr. Baron is also founder and director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at Northwestern, where she mentors clinical psychology graduate students and sleep medicine fellows and provides Behavioral Sleep Medicine interventions in a multidisciplinary setting. 

 

Student Dissertation and Thesis Award

Awarded to Ali Wilkerson

The Student Dissertation and Thesis Award is awarded to a student member who has displayed outstanding work meeting the criteria of theoretical background supporting the project, methodological rigor, and significance of the findings to the field of BSM.

Ali Wilkerson is a Licensed Psychological Associate and a graduate student in the Clinical Health Psychology program at University of North Texas. She received a Bachelor of Arts from Texas A&M University and a Masters of Education from the University of North Texas. She recently completed her fourth year of doctoral training, and in August she will begin the Charleston Consortium Psychology Internship at Medical University of South Carolina and VA Medical Center. Ali’s research focuses on the impact of sleep disturbance on daytime performance, particularly in the perinatal period. She is currently completing her dissertation, examining sleep fragmentation and neurobehavioral functioning in the transition from late pregnancy to early postpartum.

 

SBSM Merit Awards

The SBSM Merit Awards recognized outstanding research of clinical presentation in behavioral sleep medicine at the SLEEP 2014 meeting. The awards were based on 2 award categories; Oral Presentation of a Poster and Symposium, Clinical Workshop, and Discussion Groups.

1. The first recipient is Dr. Christina McCrae for her team’s submission of “Neuroplasticity in Comorbid Chronic Pain and Chronic Insomnia: Impact of Improved Sleep on Central Sensitization”.
2. The second recipient is Dr. Rebecca Bernert and Dr. Vaughn McCall (SBSM Member) for their team’s submission of “Disturbed Sleep as a Suicide Risk Factor and Novel Treatment Target: An Opportunity for Prevention”.
3. The third recipient is Dr. Kelly Baron, for her team’s submission of “Exercise as a Behavioral Sleep Medicine Intervention”.
4. The final recipient is Dr. Daniel Taylor for his team’s submission of “Cognitive and Behavioral Interventions for Insomnia in Military Populations”.

 

2013 Awards

Peter Hauri Career Distinguished Achievement Award 

Awarded to Don Posner, PhD, CBSM 

Dr. Posner is a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University. He is the Director of Clinical Behavioral Medicine for the Department of Psychiatry at Rhode Island and Miriam Hospitals, and also the Director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program for the Sleep Disorders Center of Lifespan Hospitals in Providence Rhode Island. He has been actively engaged in the treatment of sleep-disordered patients for the past twenty-five years. For twenty of those years he has served as the lead supervisor and mentor for a sleep medicine rotation in the behavioral medicine track of the Brown clinical psychology internship. He also mentors post-doctoral fellows and lectures on Behavioral Sleep Medicine and Anxiety Disorders to interns, fellows, and residents in internal medicine and psychiatry. In addition, he is currently a consultant for the Veteran's Administration roll out of CBT-I and is training VA clinicians across the country in the implementation of this treatment.

Dr. Posner is a member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and is one of the first certified behavioral sleep medicine specialists recognized by that group. He is also a founding member of the Society of Behavioral Sleep Medicine. Dr. Posner is a co-author on the Cognitive Behavioral Treatment of Insomnia: A Session by Session Guide (2005/2008).

 

Early Career Distinguished Achievement Award

Awarded to Michael Grandner, PhD

Dr. Grandner is an Instructor in the Department of Psychiatry and Member of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Grandner' s research interests include (1) adverse cardiovascular, metabolic, and behavioral health outcomes associated with short sleep and/or insufficient sleep, (2) biopsychosocial determinants of short sleep, insufficient sleep, and poor sleep quality, and (3) behavioral interventions for sleep as a domain of health behavior. In summary, his research aims to better understand the downstream adverse outcomes of insufficient or poor quality sleep, the upstream determinants of sleep and sleep behaviors, and how knowledge of sleep determinants can inform behavioral interventions for adverse outcomes. 

 

Student Dissertation and Thesis Award

Awarded to Denise Jarrin, PhD

Denise C. Jarrin received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Concordia University in August 2012. Her doctoral dissertation was comprised of four studies that examined one possible pathogenic pathway in which poor sleep contributes to the etiology of childhood obesity. She is trained in psychophysiology, specifically on autonomic dysfunction as measured by heart rate variability. She is also a co-investigator on a Canadian Institute of Health Research grant investigating the pathways between sleep and childhood obesity totaling over $4 million. Dr. Jarrin has been awarded numerous fellowships from both federal and provincial agencies for her excellence as a graduate student. Her interests in sleep have expanded to include socioeconomic status, and based on scientific merit and relevance was the recipient of the 2012 American Academy of Sleep Medicine Young Investigator Award. More recently, she was awarded the prestigious Canadian Institute of Health Research Post-doctoral Fellowship to examine the pathogenic association between autonomic dysfunction and insomnia. Currently, she is a post-doctoral fellow at Université Laval under the mentorship of Dr. Charles Morin.