Applications of machine learning, genetics and proteomics to sleep medicine

Emmanuel Mignot, PhD, University Stanford

Emmanuel Mignot is the Craig Reynolds Professor of Sleep Medicine in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences ta Stanford University and the Director of the Stanford Center for Sleep Sciences and Medicine. He is recognized as having discovered the cause of narcolepsy. Dr. Mignot was born In Paris, France in 1959 and became a US citizen in 2003. He is a former student of the Ecole Normale Superieure (Ulm, Paris, France). He received his M.D. and Ph.D. (molecular pharmacology) from Paris V and VI University respectively in France. He practiced medicine and Psychiatry in France for several years before serving as a visiting scholar at the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic and Research Center. He joined as faculty and Director of the Center for Narcolepsy in 1993. He was named Professor of Psychiatry in 2001, and Director of the newly established Stanford Center For Sleep Sciences and Medicine in 2010. He has received numerous award for his work and is a member of both the National Academies of Sciences and Medicine. 

Dr. Mignot positionally cloned a mutation in the dog causing narcolepsy (hypocretin receptor 2) and discovered that narcolepsy, affecting 1/2000 people, is caused by an immune-mediated destruction of 70,000 hypocretin/orexin neurons in the hypothalamus, also revealing hypocretins as a novel critical sleep-regulatory pathway. Most of his current research focuses on the neurobiology, genetics and immunology of narcolepsy, with indirect interest in the neuroimmunology of other brain disorders. His laboratory uses state of the art human genetics and immunology techniques, such as genome wide association, exome or whole genome sequencing in the study of human sleep and sleep disorders, with parallel studies in animal models. His laboratory is also interested in web-based assessments of sleep disorders, computer-based processing of polysomnography (PSG), and outcome research.