This profile is part of a series to highlight the researchers and leaders who will be honored at a ceremony on Nov. 6 for UNMC’s annual research awards – the prestigious Scientist Laureate Award and the Research Leadership, Distinguished Scientist, New Investigator, Career Achievement and Community Service to Research Awards.
New Investigator
New Investigator Awards go to outstanding UNMC scientists who in the past two years have secured their first funding from the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Defense or other national sources. New investigators also must demonstrate scholarly activity such as publishing their research and/or presenting their findings at national conventions.
- Name: Peng Zhong, PhD
- Title: Assistant professor, Department of Neurological Sciences, UNMC College of Medicine
- Joined UNMC: August 2022
- Hometown: Heilongjiang, China
Describe your research focus in three words or less:
Sleep, neurodegenerative diseases and neuropsychiatric diseases
Why is research important in the world today?
Poor sleep can have devastating health consequences. A range of sleep disorders, such as insomnia, reduced sleep efficiency and REM sleep behavior disorder, are linked to multiple neurological disorders, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, autism, depression and addiction. Sleep has been recognized as an important public health issue.
My research will make a difference because:
Both sleep and wakefulness are tightly controlled by distinct neural circuits throughout the brain, the malfunction of which causes a variety of sleep disorders. To develop effective intervention strategies, a critical requirement is to understand the brain mechanisms controlling sleep. Taking advantage of multiple state-of-the-art techniques, we take a multifaceted but integrated experimental approach for studying the pathophysiology of sleep circuits in the generation of sleep disorders and neuropsychiatric/neurodegenerative disorders. This allows us to identify novel circuit-based therapies for treating these diseases-associated sleep impairments and early biomarkers for disease diagnosis.
The best advice I’ve ever received is:
Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.
Three things you may not know about me are:
- My sleep is not well.
- My wife and I have two children and one puppy.
- I like the Green Bay Packers, Houston Rockets, San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers.