Laura Kurdziel

When I was in graduate school, I had a moment where I was sitting in a darkened, preschool classroom surrounded by the light snoring of many sleeping children all for the sake of science, and I thought: this is my job... how did I get to be so lucky? Today, my luck has continued to see me through. I have the honor of teaching at Merrimack College, which is literally my dream job. I love the strong community of my college, I love getting to know all of my students individually, and I love working one-on-one with students in my lab. One of the downsides to working at such a small institution though, is the greatly reduced opportunity to get grant funding for research. While I have also been lucky enough to continue to collaborate with my incredible graduate advisor, Dr. Rebecca Spencer, I would like to have the technology to be able to train my students to conduct novel, and important research at Merrimack College. My overarching goal is to bring neuroscience-based sleep research to Merrimack College. In doing so, I will continue to pursue my research passions - to understand why we sleep, to understand why children nap, and to help inform parents, health-care professionals, and educators as to when it is ideal for children to transition out of napping. We know that sleep is incredibly important for health, cognition, and overall well-being. As such, I want to discover how to give children their best chance through scientifically-based healthy sleep practices.

May 2016