Circadian and Visual Neuroscience

Dr Nayantara Santhi is currently a Vice-Chancellor's Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Psychology at Northumbria University. After completing her PhD at Northeastern University on human visual perception, she joined the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School to work on mechanisms underlying the non-visual effects of light and its impact on physiology and cognition. Following this she joined the Surrey Sleep Research Centre, where she focused on characterising individual differences in the circadian regulation in cognition. Dr Santhi is active in a range of international organisations, including the Sleep Research Society and European Sleep Research Society.

Dr Manuel Spitschan is a University Research Lecturer in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford. After undergraduate studies in psychology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, he completed his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania on melanopsin signals in the human visual system. He then joined the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University to work on temporal integration in human circadian photoreception. In 2017, he joined the University of Oxford on a prestigious Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship. In January 2022, he will move to the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen to set up a new research group on sensory and circadian neuroscience. Dr Manuel is active in various international organisations, including the Optical Society, the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) and the Daylight Academy.