Wesley F. Seidel

Mr. Seidel has devoted 38 years to sleep research. He was a member of the Stanford University School of Medicine Sleep Disorders Clinic & Research Center from 1976-2002. For the first 12 years at Stanford, Mr. Seidel was under the mentorship of Dr. William C. Dement — a discoverer of REM sleep and by many considered the father of sleep disorders medicine. As laboratory director of the human sleep research facility, Mr. Seidel conducted pharmacological studies that measured sleep and wakefulness across the entire 24 hour cycle. He has 33 peer-reviewed publications, nine as first author. His paper in Science reported the first head-to-head hypnotic drug efficacy trial based on an induced circadian rhythm insomnia, which thus emphasized daytime wakefulness as an efficacy measure for sleeping pills. In 1988 he joined Dale Edgar at Stanford and helped to develop a world class automated bioassay of rodent sleep-wakefulness. ‘SCORE’ gathers multiple concurrent physiological and behavioural variables for pre-clinical research. During the development of this assay at Stanford University, he created computer code to automate quality control and graphical visualization of the data, designed and administered a relational database, and wrote SAS code to manage and to statistically evaluate the data. In 2001, a startup venture, Hypnion, Inc., obtained an exclusive license for the SCORE technology, owned by Stanford. Upon joining Hypnion in February 2002, Mr. Seidel continued to optimize the bioassay for efficient reporting of results to senior management and to chemists, and furthered all phases of the subsequent development of SCORE, including hardware, software and database capabilities. He took on the additional responsibility of acting director of Hypnion’s in vivo research facility for a year. In 2007, Hypnion concluded a successful drug discovery program and was purchased by Eli Lilly & Co. for $315 million. The SCORE technology was thereupon moved to the Lilly UK neuroscience research facility in Surrey, where Mr. Seidel assisted in the successful transition and further development of this ‘transforming’ technology. Its state-of-the-art reliance on an Oracle relational database to control the flow of automated analysis of multivariate physiological data in real time has become within the company a model of the future of in vivo research. After 8 years with Lilly UK, he retired in 2015 to Carmel, California.