Dr. Kate Porcheret

Postdoctoral Researcher
Norwegian Center for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies, Oslo, Norway

Kate Porcheret is a post-doctoral researcher at the Norwegian Center for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies, Norway. She has a background in biological sciences from Imperial College London, and got her PhD in clinical neurosciences from the University of Oxford. Her research is focused on the role of sleep in the aftermath of traumatic events, with her early work focused on the impact of sleep and sleep deprivation of the development of intrusive memories following both experimental and real-world traumatic events. She spent a year working in the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia working on a project looking at the impact of operational sleep disruption on PTSD-relevant fear learning processes, before moving to Norway on a Scientia fellowship funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant hosted by the University of Oslo. During her fellowship she investigated sleep in the survivors of the 2011 Utøya Island Terrorist attack using the 10 year longitudinal Utøya study. Currently she is continuing this work as well as investigating sleep in trauma exposed children before and after a novel parent-led treatment and the long-term impact of the COVID pandemic on sleep in healthcare workers in Norway.

Kate was a member of the ESRS Early Career Research Network Committee from 2016 to 2020, chairing the committee from 2018. She is currently a member of the Web Editorial Board for the ESRS Digital Communication Committee. Kate has a keen interest in science communication taking part in various projects including talks, demonstrations, articles and a podcast (The Scientia podcast). She continues this interest as an editor of the ESRS Sleep Science Friday post.