Dr. Ruth Benca is Professor and Chair, Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the University of California, Irvine. She received her AB at Harvard and her MD and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago. She has been a faculty member at the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was Associate Chair of the Psychiatry Department and Director of the UW Center for Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research. She moved to UCI in 2016, where she has established a sleep medicine center providing clinical care for sleep disorders as well as promoting translational research. Her research focuses on the interface between sleep and psychiatric disorders, and the role of sleep and sleep disorders on Alzheimer's disease. She has served as principal investigator for studies funded by agencies including the NIH and the DOD. Her work has spanned basic research in animal models to clinical research and clinical trials. She has authored over 150 articles, reviews and book chapters. She has served as President of the Sleep Research Society and on the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.