Mathias Basner, MD, PhD, MSc

Mathias Basner, MD, PhD, M.Sc. is an Associate Professor of Sleep and Chronobiology in Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Dr. Basner received his degree in Medicine and his Master in Research from the University of Bochum, Germany and Master of Science in Epidemiology from the University of Bielefeld, Germany. Dr. Basner trained at the Institute for Applied Physiology at the University of Bochum and worked as a Research Associate at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Aerospace Medicine, Flight Physiology Division from 1999 until 2006 before moving to the United States to pursue his research interests in the neurobehavioral consequences of sleep loss as a Research Associate. He returned to DLR in 2008 to head the Flight Physiology Division for two years. In January 2010, Dr. Basner assumed the position of Assistant Professor of Sleep and Chronobiology in Psychiatry and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2015.

Dr. Basner's primary research interests concern the effects of sleep loss on neurobehavioral and cognitive functions, population studies on sleep time and waking activities, and the effects of traffic noise on sleep and recuperation. Dr. Basner conducted several large scale laboratory and field studies on the effects of traffic noise on sleep between 1999 and 2008 as PI. For this research, Dr. Basner was awarded the German Aerospace Center award for outstanding research in 2007 and the Science Award of the German Academy for Aviation and Travel Medicine in 2010.

Dr. Basner is Deputy Editor of the journal SLEEP, and ad-hoc reviewer for 50+ other scientific journals. He has reviewed proposals for NIH, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Australian Antarctic Science Program (AASP), and the German Research Foundation (DFG).