Meet the 2025 Winner: Bastien Lechat, PhD
Dr. Bastien Lechat is a Senior Research Fellow at the Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute (FHMRI): Sleep Health. He completed his Bachelor of Engineering Science from Le Mans University in France and his PhD in Biomedical Engineering at the Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health. Currently, he is funded through an Emerging Leadership Investigator Grant from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia.
Bastien’s research is dedicated to advancing global sleep health, driven by a commitment to making innovative sleep health solutions accessible to everyone. His work primarily focuses on improving the diagnosis and management of sleep disorders through the integration of artificial intelligence, big data analytics, digital health, and minimally invasive wearable technologies. Current projects explore the impact of night-to-night variability in obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) severity on clinical diagnosis and management of OSA. Other recent investigation utilized large global wearable user databases to study the effects of climate change on sleep health and sleep disorders.
Bastien is deeply honored to receive the 2024 James B. Skatrud Award. He is incredibly grateful to his mentors, Danny Eckert, Robert Adams, Amy Reynolds, and Peter Catcheside, for their invaluable guidance and insightful discussions. Bastien is also thankful to his colleagues whose daily collaboration makes his work exceptionally rewarding. Bastien also wants to thank his family for their love, support and continued encouragement.
Description
The award is intended to recognize the career accomplishments to date and future promise of a new investigator working in the broad area of respiratory neurobiology and sleep, which includes control of breathing, sleep mechanisms, and sleep-disordered breathing. This may include work at the basic, clinical, epidemiological, or other levels.
This award recognizes a new investigator who is beyond formal training, but not yet fully established. It is not intended for well-established investigators. It is also not intended as recognition for a single project, but rather for overall accomplishments and future potential. There are no citizenship requirements for this award. The awardee will be expected to make a short presentation about their research at the SRN Assembly Membership Meeting. The awardee will receive a framed certificate and a monetary award of up to $1000.
Eligibility:
- Nominees cannot be at a rank higher than Assistant Professor (or equivalent).
- Ph.D. or other non-physician scientists should be no more than seven years beyond the completion of their doctoral or terminal research degree at the time of application.
- Physician-scientists (M.D.) should be no more than seven years beyond clinical training (residency, fellowship) at the time of application
- Exceptions may be made for Nominees who have taken significant time away from their academic career; however, this must be pre-emptively discussed with the Planning Committee Chair.
- Nominees should have more than one first-authored paper that is considered to advance the science of respiratory neurobiology or sleep.
- Nominee and Nominator(s) must be ATS members.
- Nominee must be able to attend the ATS International Conference.
- Nomination of international candidates or those from underrepresented minority groups is encouraged. Details may be provided in the nomination letter and/or the candidate’s statement.
Nomination Submission Documents
- A summary of the candidate’s accomplishments in the attached bio-sketch format.
- A statement by the candidate of his/her career goals and the potential of his/her research to advance the field of sleep and respiratory neurobiology (maximum 1 page). Candidates are encouraged to explicitly describe their achievements in terms of the scoring criteria (e.g., total grant funding, publications, SRN/ATS participation or leadership).
- Nominating letter by a mentor (or mentors), which directly addresses the scoring criteria and academic potential
Evaluation Criteria
Applicants are scored using a 1-5 rating system (with 5 being the best) in each of the following categories. A weighted average will be calculated for each category:
0.2 Grant Funding
0.1 Publications - total (quality & quantity)
0.3 Publications - original research – first, senior or corresponding author
0.1 Nomination Letter(s)
0.1 Personal Statement
0.1 Participation in SRN and ATS
0.1 Leadership Potential