BSS Executive Committee
The Executive Board of the British Sleep Society
Please click on the photographs for more information on each member.
If you wish to contact any members of the Executive Board, please email admin@sleepsociety.org.uk
Professor Mary Morrell
President
Mary J Morrell is Professor of Sleep and Respiratory Physiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London. She received her PhD from London University and was a Wellcome Trust Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Upon her return to the UK she joined with clinical colleagues to establish the Academic Unit of Sleep and Breathing at the Royal Brompton Hospital.
Prof Morrell’s research is focused on the interaction between respiratory and sleep control, which leads to sleep-related breathing disorders, specifically sleep apnoea. The link between basic science and clinical medicine is a feature of her research. Taking this approach she has translated physiological studies into large randomised treatment trials.
Her research is supported by the Wellcome Trust, British Heart Foundation, National Institute of Health Research and ResMed UK. International collaborations include the Universities of Melbourne, Detroit, Wisconsin and Harvard. Prof Morrell has served on the Board of Directors for the American Thoracic Society and is a Trustee of the Physiological Society.
She has been an active member of the British Sleep Society for almost 20 years, serving on the Executive committee and as the Local Scientific Chair for the 19th European Sleep Research Society Congress in Glasgow 2008.
Dr Paul Reading
Past President
Dr Paul Reading completed his medical training at Cambridge and London before returning to Cambridge to undertake a PhD in the behavioural assessment of embryonic neural grafts in models of Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases. Involvement in the neurobiology of reticular activating systems fuelled a later clinical and academic interest in sleep disorders such as narcolepsy.
He completed his neurological training in Edinburgh and Newcastle before recently moving to the James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough to take up a new neurology post. He has been running a weekly (now bi-weekly) Neurology Sleep Clinic for 11 years, attracting referrals from the Northern region and beyond. His particular interests are narcolepsy, abnormal sleep in neurodegenerative disease (particularly parkinsonian syndromes) and parasomnias.
He has lectured widely on numerous sleep-related topics and organised several seminars and educational meetings including the Northern Sleep Forum, now in its fifth year.
