The Koerner Center is delighted to announce that Koerner Fellow Meir Kryger was presented with the Nathaniel Kleitman Distinguished Service Award on June 6, 2022. The award, given by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, honors individuals dedicated to the sleep field who have made significant contributions in the areas of administration, public relations, and government affairs.
Dr. Thomas Roth, director of the Henry Ford Sleep Disorders and Research Center, nominated Dr. Kryger for the award. In his nomination letter, Dr. Roth wrote, “I have known Kryger for well over thirty years. During that time, I have collaborated on research projects with him, served on society and journal editorial boards with him, sat on NIH study section, and taken part in symposia at national and international meetings with him. Over this period of time, I became convinced of his profound commitment and singularly outstanding contributions to societal service, scholarship broadly, and to academic sleep medicine specifically.”
Dr. Kryger joined the Yale School of Medicine and the VA Connecticut Health System in November of 2011. He was previously professor of medicine at the University of Manitoba, where he established the first clinical laboratory studying patients with sleep breathing problems in Canada. Dr. Kryger has published more than 200 research articles and book chapters. He is the chief editor of the most widely used textbook in sleep medicine, The Principles and Practice of Sleep Medicine, currently in its seventh edition, and is the author of The Mystery of Sleep, the Atlas of Clinical Sleep Medicine, and Kryger’s Sleep Medicine Review.
Dr. Kryger was the first to diagnose and report obstructive sleep apnea in North America, and his research was the first to show the feasibility of using noninvasive techniques to ventilate post-polio patients in their homes. His laboratory elucidated the interaction between heart failure and sleep respiration, publishing the first systematic study of oxygen in this condition. He has been president of both the Canadian Sleep Society and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, and has been on the Board of Directors of the National Sleep Foundation in Washington, D.C., and served as chairman. In 1996 he received the William C. Dement Award for Academic Achievement in sleep medicine, and in 2011 he received a Distinguished Scientist Award from the Canadian Sleep Society, and the Distinguished Achievement Award from the American Thoracic Society.
Dr. Kryger graduated from the McGill University Medical School, interned at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, and completed internal medicine training at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. His pulmonary fellowship was at the University of Colorado, followed by two years of research training. He is boarded in internal medicine, pulmonary medicine, and sleep medicine and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada.
For further information on the honor and Dr. Kryger’s career, click here.