Call for Sleep DownUnder 2025 proposals

Sleep DownUnder 2025 will be held 8 - 11 October at the Adelaide Convention Centre. We’ll have the usual full in-person format with a massive five concurrent streams! Selected plenary and symposium sessions will be recorded and made available for purchase through the ASA Learning Centre after the conference, but no sessions will be live streamed. 

Program planning is underway, and the Conference Committee needs your help to plan a riveting and relevant four days that will appeal to ASA and ANZSSA members across all the disciplines and career stages.

International speakers
Two international speakers have accepted our invitation to present keynote addresses at Sleep DownUnder 2025, and proposers are welcome to include one of them on session proposals. 

Sanjay R. Patel is certified in pulmonary disease and sleep medicine by the American Board of Internal Medicine. Dr Patel is a professor of medicine and epidemiology at University of Pittsburgh, and medical director of UPMC Comprehensive Sleep Disorders program. He has a master’s degree in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health and a medical degree from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has also completed a residency at the University of Pennsylvania Health System and a fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr Patel’s research focuses on the health implications of poor sleep with particular interest on the relationships between sleep and cardiometabolic disease. He directs the Centre for Sleep and Cardiovascular Outcomes Research at the University of Pittsburgh. He has published extensively on obesity management and glucose metabolism with sleep apnea, as well as the association between curtailed sleep and long-term health effects. His research and clinical interests include understanding the epidemiology of sleep disorders with particular emphasis on chronic partial sleep deprivation and obstructive sleep apnea and the potential effects of these disorders on metabolism.  Dr Patel was one of the first to identify long sleep as a predictor of adverse health outcomes and is currently conducting a clinical trial evaluating the cardiovascular impact of treating sleep apnea in a diabetic population.

Yuval Nir is a sleep investigator at Tel Aviv University and the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Israel. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. Giulio Tononi and Chiara Cirelli at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, training in sleep research. In 2012, Professor Nir set up his own lab at Tel Aviv University. He has won several awards and prizes for his research including a recent ERC grant on sleep and memory, the Sieratzki and Adelis prizes for neuroscience, as well as HFSP, EMBO, and Fulbright fellowships.  Professor Nir’s research focuses on sleep and its relation to cognition: basic research on sleep electrophysiology and sleep functions, the neuronal basis of disconnection from the external environment during sleep and anesthesia (with a focus on the auditory system), wake-promoting neuromodulation (with a focus on the locus-coeruleus noradrenaline system), how sleep promotes learning and memory, and how sleep can be used to improve medical diagnosis in neurological and psychiatric disorders. Diverse experimental approaches are used including human research (intracranial electrophysiology in epilepsy patients, EEG, fMRI, pharmacology, eye tracking) and rodent research (single-neuron electrophysiology, optogenetics, pharmacology).

Short courses
Two short courses are already being planned:

• a research training day being prepared by the NEST Council, and

• a two-day short course for dental sleep medicine practitioners.

There are two remaining short course spots available. Preference will be given to topics that have a broad appeal across clinical and other member groups. 

Plenary and symposium sessions
Plenary session proposals should focus on topics that appeal broadly across ASA and ANZSSA member groups. Symposium sessions may have a more specialised focus. Proposers should consider whether either of the international speakers could make a contribution to their topics and include this in their session proposal, but please don’t invite the international speakers to speak in your symposium prior to your proposal being approved.

Submitting
Submissions are due by 8.00am AEDT on Monday 3 March.

Please read the instructions available here before making your submission. There are different template forms for short course and plenary/symposium proposals. 

Please make sure all participants except international keynote speakers have confirmed their participation ahead of submitting your proposal. If you would like to include an international speaker in your proposal, please do NOT invite them ahead of the Conference Committee approving your proposal. You can submit your proposal online by clicking on the relevant link: 

Plenary / Symposium
Short Course

Any questions or issues with making a submission should be directed to [email protected]