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By Judith Van Dongen, WSU Spokane/WSU News Service, 509-358-7524, jcvd@wsu.edu; Hans Van Dongen, Ph.D., WSU Spokane/Sleep and Performance Research Center, 509-358-7755, hvd@wsu.edu , WSU News Service

Contact: Gregory Belenky, M.D., WSU Spokane/Sleep and Performance Research Center, 509-358-7738, belenky@wsu.edu;

Washington State University Researchers Awarded $1.4M for Driver Fatigue Studies

SPOKANE, Wash. - The Sleep and Performance Research Center at Washington State University Spokane has received a competitively awarded $1.4 million contract from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's Office of Research to investigate the relationships between work hours in the transportation sector and drivers' sleep, performance and health.

The funding was awarded for three separate studies, which will be led by principal investigators Gregory Belenky, research professor and center director, and Hans Van Dongen, associate research professor and assistant director. Two consist of laboratory experiments that simulate sleep schedules commercial vehicle drivers may face and will take place in the Sleep and Performance Research Center's sleep laboratory, using two brand-new, high-fidelity driving simulators in the adjacent critical job tasks simulation laboratory. The other is a field study of motor coach drivers.

The researchers have already commenced work on one of the studies and plan to begin the other two studies in the course of 2009.

"These studies will address some very fundamental questions of sleep in the operational environment, including the effects of night-time work schedules, the timing of sleep and work, and performance and health consequences of split versus consolidated sleep," said Belenky.

The outcomes of the three studies will be relevant to any operational environment in which extended work hours, shift work and 24/7 operations are commonplace, including commercial aviation, hospitals, military operations and manufacturing.

About the Sleep and Performance Research Center
WSU's Sleep and Performance Research Center includes a state-of-the-art human sleep research laboratory located on the Riverpoint Campus at WSU Spokane, and two world-class basic sleep research laboratories on WSU's main campus in Pullman. The human sleep research laboratory is funded entirely with extramural grants and contracts, and accommodates carefully controlled experiments to study the effects of sleep and sleep loss on human cognitive functioning. With the recent addition of a critical job task simulation laboratory, the center's facility in Spokane is the only one of its kind in the world.

About Washington State University Spokane
WSU Spokane is the urban campus of Washington State University, a land-grant research university founded in 1890. The campus features advanced studies and research in health sciences and health professions, the design disciplines, education, social and policy sciences, and science and technology. Washington State University is one of just 95 public and private research universities with very high research activity, according to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching classifications. In addition, U.S. News & World Report ranks WSU as one of the top public research universities in the nation.

Related Web sites:
WSU Spokane: www.spokane.wsu.edu
WSU Sleep and Performance Research Center: http://www.wsu.edu/sprc
WSU Office of Research: www.research.wsu.edu

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