Philippa Gander

Philippa Helen Gander is a New Zealand sleep researcher. In 2021, she was conferred with the title of emeritus professor by Massey University, where she had been inaugural director of the Sleep/Wake Research Centre until stepping down from that role in 2019.

Academic career Gander wrote her master's thesis at the University of Auckland in 1976 with the title A model for the circadian pacemaker of Hemideina thoracica derived from the effects of temperature on its activity rhythm. After a 1980 PhD titled Circadian organization in the regulation of locomotor activity and reproduction in Rattus exulans at the same institution, Gander took up a Fulbright Fellowship at Harvard Medical School in 1980. She moved to the NASA-Ames Research Center in 1983 as part of the flight crew fatigue and jet-lag research programme. Gander returned to New Zealand in 1998, and established the Sleep/Wake Research Centre at the Wellington School of Medicine with the assistance of funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand. She moved to Massey University and was appointed a full professor in 2003, and the research centre became part of Massey's newly established research school of public health.

In 2009, Gander was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. In the 2017 Queen's Birthday Honours, she was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to the study of sleep and fatigue.

Notable students of Gander's include Leigh Signal and Ridvan Tupai-Firestone, both professors at Massey University.

Selected works