Frank A.J.L. Scheer

Frank A.J.L. Scheer, PhD is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the Director of the Medical Chronobiology Program (MCP) at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), Boston. Dr. Scheer’s work focuses on influences of the endogenous circadian system and its disruption—such as with shift work or late-night eating—on cardiovascular, pulmonary, and metabolic regulation and disease states, including hypertension, asthma, obesity and diabetes. Since 2005, Dr. Scheer has been funded continuously as Principal Investigator by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Scheer has received numerous scientific awards, including the Young Investigator Award by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the Neal Miller Award by the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research, and the Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award by the Sleep Research Society. Dr. Scheer is an Editorial Board Member of several peer-reviewed journals, is an Associate Editor at the journal SLEEP, and is a Member the Board of Directors of the Sleep Research Society.

Dr. Scheer co-founded and currently directs the MCP, an interdisciplinary research program at BWH to foster the translational research in sleep and circadian biology to understand the basis behind time-variant changes in disease severity, the effects of circadian misalignment (typical in night shift workers), food timing, and their interaction with genetics (e.g., the common MTNR1B variant). Understanding the biological basis of these changes across the day and night and their interaction with genetics may help in the development of personalized and time-based behavioral, environmental, and pharmaceutical interventions (e.g. appropriately timed meals, exercise, light, or melatonin to target specific phases of the body clock) to prevent, treat, and/or manage disease.