Anne Skeldon visited the Applied and Industrial Mathematical Science group at the University of Bath yesterday and gave a seminar on “Mathematical modelling of sleep and (other) daily biological rhythms: light, clocks and social jetlag“. Link and abstract here. In this talk she reviewed some of the existing mathematical models of the sleep/wake cycle and the body clock. She showed how they are intriguing examples of non-smooth dynamical systems and discussed how mathematical models can help us understand the biological mechanisms that underlie sleep timing and duration. She showed how this could then be used to address policy questions such as whether we should move school start times for adolescents.  The talk was largely based on research carried out in collaboration with Prof Derk-Jan Dijk (Surrey Sleep Research Centre).