Anne Skeldon visited the School of Mathematics at the University of Exeter today (Tuesday 12 October) and gave a talk on “Dynamics of the sleep-wake cycle: from circle maps to influencing policy“. A link to the seminar webpage is here. In the talk, Anne gave an introduction to the non-smooth coupled oscillator systems that form the basis of current models of sleep-wake regulation, showing how they can be represented as circle maps and discussed their dynamical behaviour. She then discussed how she and her collaborators have used models to inform debates on societal questions such as whether to move school start time for adolescents (see image left for petition to Parliament). The talk primarily covered various pieces of joint work with Derk-Jan Dijk (Surrey Sleep Research Centre), with Gianne Derks, Paul Glendinning (Manchester) and with Andrew Phillips (Monash). The images below show some of the mathematics in the talk, taken from this paper.