ESRS Newsletter August 2025

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Summer is nearly over and it feels like Europe has not yet gone on break. We have been very busy at the ESRS. The Scientific Committee has worked hard to revise, test and launch the Call for Symposia for Sleep Europe 2026 in Maastricht, Netherlands. This is your chance to influence the diversity and quality of the scientific programme built by ESRS members. We aim to ensure comprehensive representation across all sleep-related domains, including Basic Animal, Basic Human, Mental Health, Neurology, Paediatrics, Public Health, Respiratory, and Sleep Technology.

All ESRS members are invited to submit a symposium proposal. This is a valued opportunity to help shape the scientific direction of Sleep Europe 2026 and highlight important advances in your field. The deadline for submissions is 8 October 2025, and we look forward to receiving your proposals.

I would like to thank everyone who has expressed interest in contributing to our upcoming manual for the recording and analysis of sleep in laboratory rodents. This new initiative, led by the ESRS Basic Sleep Research Committee (BSRC), seeks to address long-standing challenges around reproducibility and methodological transparency by establishing harmonised scoring protocols for rodent models, with a particular focus on mice and rats. We’ve received many enthusiastic responses to the open call, and we’re grateful for the interest already shown. To ensure that the vacation season hasn’t prevented anyone from applying, we’ve extended the deadline to 15 August 2025. You can read more and submit your expression of interest here.

In July, we hosted the Respiratory Track of eSleep Europe, which brought together more than 500 participants for a lively exchange of clinical and scientific insights. I would like to thank everyone who joined us for this important event, and in particular, the speakers for their outstanding contributions. The sessions are available on-demand for those who registered.

eSleep Europe will resume on 9 October with the Basic Human Track, featuring a joint symposium with the European Biological Rhythms Society (EBRS). The programme is shaping up to explore timely topics related to the mechanisms regulating human sleep and wakefulness.

I would like to draw your attention to the third instalment of the ongoing webinar series ESRS/SRS Joint Seminar – Autumn Edition, taking place on 22 September 2025, in recognition of the autumn equinox. This edition will focus on orexin and bring together expert perspectives from both sides of the Atlantic to explore its role in sleep–wake regulation and emerging clinical applications. It is sure to be an interesting discussion.

As many of you know, the ESRS has been working with an external consulting firm, Wetando, to write a Strategic Plan to guide the society over the next years. I am pleased to report that we are entering the final stages and look forward to sharing the final outcome with all members before the year is out.  

Kind regards,   

Erna Sif Arnardóttir