Sleep disruptions are common and pose a significant public health risk – insufficient sleep causes cognitive deficits that increase the risk of severe motor vehicle accidents, medical mistakes, workplace injuries, and other serious events. Although the causes of these cognitive deficits are not known, comparable behavioral impairments have also been detected after sleep loss in smaller animals, including the fruit fly. Dr. Donlea has studied the regulation and functions of sleep in flies as a PhD student in Paul Shaw’s lab at Washington University in St. Louis and as a postdoctoral researcher in Gero Miesenböck’s lab at the University of Oxford. He is now a member of the Department of Neurobiology and uses a combination of behavioral genetics and in vivo electrophysiology to examine sleep’s basic neural functions.