Thomas Roth

Career Roth explained his early interest in sleep research as a result of a summer job: "When I was a student there was a job opening in a dream laboratory in the department of psychiatry. I figured I could do anything for a summer, so I worked in the laboratory and became enthralled with learning about sleep. It occurred to me that we just did not know much about a third of our lives—the time we spend sleeping... even the most rudimentary description of sleep in science didn't exist yet. The average person spends 25 years of their life sleeping and we knew nothing about that. That summer job totally changed the way I worked, and sleep became my interest for life." In 1978 Roth founded the Sleep Disorders and Research Center at Henry Ford Health. In 2014, after his retirement, he was honored at a reception of the SLEEP 2014 conference in Minneapolis.

Over his career, Roth has served in many leadership positions: President of the Sleep Research Society Board of Directors of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies Co-chair, World Health Organization's worldwide project on sleep and health Selected publications Books

Articles

Awards, honors 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award, National Sleep Foundation 2012 SRS Mary Carskadon Outstanding Educator Award 1999 Worldwide Service Award from the World Federation of Sleep Research Societies 1990 Nathaniel Kleitman Distinguished Service Award, American Academy of Sleep Medicine