Jerome M. Siegel, PhD, is professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, former president of the Sleep Research Society, and the recipient of Merit and Javits awards from the National Institutes of Health and the Distinguished Scientist award from the Sleep Research Society. His laboratory has made discoveries concerning the role of hypocretin in human narcolepsy and Parkinson's disease. He has studied the phylogeny of sleep as a clue to sleep function, discovering that the primitive mammal platypus has rapid eye movement sleep and that marine mammals can go without extended periods of sleep for long periods without ill effects.