Circadian rhythms are biological oscillations that recur with a period of approximately one day. Health issues related to circadian rhythms include jet lag, shift work, seasonal depression, and time-of-day variations in response to medical treatments. Our Center is focused on these circadian rhythms, the underlying biological clock mechanisms that drive the rhythms, and their implications for human health and agriculture.
The CCB offers administrative support to improve the effectiveness of circadian biology research programs and to facilitate multi-investigator interactions, including:
Research.com ranked CCB Executive Committee Member Sonia Ancoli-Israel among the world’s top female scientists for 2023. She made the 2022 list as well. Dr. Ancoli-Israel is ranked 180 in the world, 111 in the US and first at UCSD. In addition, she was awarded the UCSD 2024 Dickson Emeriti Professorship. Congratulations, Dr. Ancoli-Israel!
Salk Professor and CCB member Terry Sejnowski was awarded the 2024 Brain Prize from the Lundbeck Foundation for his pioneering work in computational and theoretical neuroscience. He shares the prize with Larry Abbott of Columbia University and Haim Sompolinsky of Harvard University and Hebrew University. Congratulations, Terry!
CCB Executive Committee trainee representative Christian Harding was named a Schmidt AI in Science Postdoc at UCSD. This multi-institution initiative supports Postdoctoral Fellows with a two-year fellowship as they learn and apply AI techniques to their research in the engineering, mathematical, and natural sciences. Christian will extend his research into latent sleep apnea subtypes by identifying patterns in large datasets of sleep apnea mechanisms, symptoms and comorbidities.
CCB hosted a very successful 14th Annual Center for Circadian Biology Symposium, held at the Sanford Consortium, Feb 21-23, 2024. We thank the success of our event to the 116 attendees and 19 outstanding speakers. Attendees were represented from 2 countries and 12 states.
Philanthropists Irwin and Joan Jacob's $1M gift to honor Stuart Brody will help establish the Stuart and Barbara L. Brody Endowed Chair in Circadian Biology and Medicine, with an additional $1.5M to support the research of the Brody chairholder, toward a future of medicine helped by circadian biology.
Another outstanding CCB Fall Workshop was shared by all. Everyone enjoyed a variety of speakers including Staff Scientists, postdocs, and PhD students.
Prof Stuart Brody from CCB and UCSD has been awarded to be one of the 2022 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). His lab's contributions in deciphering the biochemical and genetic aspects of chronobiology is immense. They use Neurospora to understand mechanisms of clockwork.
Carrie Partch and her former student Jeff Swan worked with Janet Iwasa and her postdoc Franchescka Lopez Rivera at the University of Utah to create an animation of the structural changes in the KaiA-KaiB-KaiC cyanobacteria circadian oscillator during its daily cycle. The animation brings the structural events of this nanomachine to life.
Study from CCB’s Panda Lab suggests that shift workers, constituting almost 30% of the American workforce, can decrease their eating window to around 10-h, without any adverse effect, to improve their cardiovascular health and well-being.