Paul Gringras is Professor of Sleep Medicine, Kings College London and Consultant in Paediatric Neurodisability and Sleep Medicine, at the Evelina London Children’s Hospital, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.

His basic medical and paediatric training took place in the UK, but he worked in Sydney in 2000 on a neuroimaging and behaviour project, and Chicago to focus on Paediatric Sleep Medicine training more specifically.

Professor Gringras is founder and service lead of one of the few UK paediatric specialist sleep clinics with a holistic approach that addresses behavioural, genetic and neurological causes of sleep disorder, in addition to commoner sleep related breathing problems.The clinic provides a national narcolepsy service supporting over 200 children and young people with narcolepsy at present.The Children’s Sleep Medicine Department integrates fully with the adult sleep service already established at St Thomas’ hospital, as part of the ‘lifespan sleep disorders’ group. Over five thousand children pass through the department each year.

Professor Gringras has published widely in peer reviewed journals, and books. He lectures internationally and serves on the International Paediatric Sleep Association and British Paediatric Sleep Association executive committee.

His research is clinically orientated and focuses on the causes and treatment of sleep disorders in children with autism, ADHD, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, Downs’s syndrome, Tourette’s syndrome and other neuro developmental problems.

Studies include epidemiological work tracking sleep patterns in large numbers of UK children as well as interventional studies, including two of the largest randomised controlled trials of melatonin in neuro developmental disorders to date, a trial of weighted blankets in Autism, sleep related breathing problems in children with Downs’s syndrome, and the cognitive impact of acute sleep restriction in children. He leads two NIHR intervention studies and continues with national epidemiology work into the causes of narcolepsy.