The SDRC is coordinating researchers and physicians involved in sleep. This field touches not only many traditional medical disciplines and specialties, but also hybrid areas such as bioengineering, genetics, and biochemistry. Therefore, integrating research and treatment requires reaching across traditional academic boundaries to take an interdisciplinary approach.

SDRC will provide seed grants for pilot studies, help affiliated faculty to prepare outside grant applications, and provide the structure for much needed cross-fertilization across the university. Crucially, the division will design and implement the systems that link researchers all along the cycle from basic science through clinical care.

In addition, the SDRC will coordinate sleep education for KUMS undergraduates, medical students, other graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows. The center will also expand KUMS’s outreach efforts to primary care physicians and their patients, an essential ingredient in the national effort on sleep medicine, which the university is help­ing to lead.