Steven Shea, Ph.D.

In 1982, Steven A Shea established one of the first clinical sleep laboratories in the UK and later obtained his PhD from the University of London (UK). In 1989 he became a Harkness Fellow at Harvard School of Public Health and later served as Director of the Medical Chronobiology Program, Director of the Sleep Disorders Research Program, and Acting Director of the Division of Sleep Medicine at Brigham & Women’s Hospital.

In 2012 Dr. Shea moved from Massachusetts to become Director of the Oregon Institute of Occupational Health Sciences at OHSU, where he was recently selected as the winner of the OHSU Distinguished Faculty Award for Outstanding Leadership based on performance across the prior five years. Dr. Shea's research has been supported by US federal grants since 1992. His team studies the effects of sleep and circadian rhythms on physiology and pathophysiology in humans, including mechanisms underlying the morning peak in adverse cardiovascular events.

Dr. Shea served as the founding editor-in-chief of Nature & Science of Sleep for over a decade. In 2019 he was selected by the Sleep Research Society to receive the “Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award” for his pioneering research on the adverse effects of night shift work on health. In 2021, Professor Shea was awarded a 7-year Outstanding Investigator Award ($6M) from the National Institutes of Health to support his research program. The Oregon Medical Research Foundation selected Dr. Shea for its 2021 Mentor Award, which is presented to an Oregonian who has provided outstanding mentorship and leadership in the support of health research, education or the advancement of health care.