Live Webinar ~ 12:00 - 1:00 PM EST

Guest Speaker

Kelton Minor, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Scientist
Columbia University Data Science Institute
New York, NY
 

Speaker Bio: 

Kelton Minor applies data science tools from the computational behavioral, social, and spatial sciences to study how humans adapt to climate stressors and planetary risks. As a postdoctoral research scientist, he is currently working on several projects that bridge between Columbia University's Data Science Institute and Climate School to identify the sensitivity of human sleep and health-related behaviors to climatic conditions at scales ranging from individuals and communities to countries and continents. Dr. Minor is a recipient of the 2024 NIH Director's Early Independence Award, and serves as a core member of The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change’s Working Group 1 where he is developing global indicators to monitor biopsychosocial-ecological responses to local climate extremes across nearly every county worldwide. Kelton received a Ph.D. in Planetary Social and Behavioral Data Science at the University of Copenhagen. He was an EliteForsk visiting researcher at the University of California Berkeley’s Global Policy Laboratory, a US-Denmark Fulbright grant recipient, and received his M.S. in Human Environment Relations from Cornell University with specializations in human factors and cognitive science.

Session Overview

While sleep health is formative for human development, functioning, and well-being throughout our lives, the putative influence of human-induced environmental changes on sleep remains poorly understood. While laboratory studies have historically shown that extreme temperatures can disrupt sleep, the real-world consequences of rising nighttime temperatures on sleep health remain underexplored. In this seminar, Dr. Minor will shed light on recent ecological evidence from the first global study of the effects of nighttime warming on human sleep, the findings from a new systematic review of the literature, and a forthcoming global climate and sleep indicator. In addition, Dr. Minor will emphasize critical gaps in research and call for increased collaborations between sleep researchers, climate scientists, and the climate impact research community.