I want to improve sleep medicine by bridging the gap between technical development of sleep monitoring devices and clinical application in patients at the sleep center or at home.

Merel van Gilst is a senior researcher in the Signal Processing Systems group (department of Electrical Engineering). She is a neuroscientist and somnologist, and together with Professor Sebastiaan Overeem, van Gilst leads the advanced sleep monitoring group. Her research is focused on the clinical application of new technology for monitoring sleep and diagnosis of sleep disorders. To achieve this goal she is also affiliated with sleep expertise center Kempenhaeghe. At the sleep center she established a large scale data collection project, where sleep registrations are combined with experimental measurement modalities, completely integrated in regular patient care. The SOMNIA database currently contains over 1000 registrations and is a valuable source of data for the sleep research activities within the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e).

Van Gilst obtained her PhD with research on sleep and sleep disorders in patients with Parkinson disease. Movement disorders during sleep are still one of her main research interests. She has ample experience with clinical research and within the Eindhoven MedTech Innovation Center (e/MTIC) she supports technical researchers in establishing clinical validation studies.

After her multidisciplinary education in cognitive artificial intelligence and neuroscience at Utrecht University (graduation 2011), Merel van Gilst obtained her PhD at the department of neurology of the Radboud university medical center Nijmegen (graduation 2016). In 2016 she became a post doctoral researcher at TU/e and sleep medicine center Kempenheaghe. In 2017 she passed the European Society of Sleep Research exam and became a somnologist (expert in sleep research).