Dr. Dale Edgar is an internationally recognized scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur who co-founded two start-up neuroscience biotechnology companies focused on novel treatments for sleep disorders and sleep-related comorbidity in neurological disease. He retired from industry research in 2023, founding Sail Science, LLC, a small business providing scientific consulting to biotechnology companies, and fostering sailing and wildlife education in partnership with St. Augustine Sailing Enterprises, Inc. Dr. Edgar previously co-founded Alairion Inc (Cambridge, MA), a start-up biotech company focused on novel treatments for sleep disorders. He served as Sr. Vice President and CSO. Alairion was acquired by Neumora Therapeutics in 2020 where Dr. Edgar served as Sr. Vice President of Discovery Research. From 2007-2013 Dr. Edgar served as Chief Scientific Leader of Discovery Sleep Research at Eli Lilly and Company, focusing on innovative medicines for sleep disorders and sleep-related comorbidities in psychiatry, pain, neurodegenerative disease, and metabolic disease. Within a year of joining Lilly Dr. Edgar was promoted to Lilly Distinguished Research Fellow and later received the Lilly Innovator Award for exceptional contributions to discovery innovation. Dr. Edgar’s multidisciplinary teams located in the United Kingdom, Singapore, Japan, and the United States, delivered numerous compounds from inception through Phase-2 human clinical trials, and developed novel methods for phenotypic assessment of target engagement and predictive sEEG biomarkers. Later in his career at Lilly, Dr. Edgar was promoted to Global Head of Science and Technology Partnerships, responsible for the strategy and oversight of consortia, public private partnerships (PPP), and academic affairs across the Lilly research enterprise. He served on numerous Lilly governance committees, led Lilly’s Post-Doctoral Scientist Training Program, founded the prestigious Lilly Innovation Fellowship Award (LIFA) program, and served as a senior science and technology advisor to the President of Lilly Research Laboratories. Prior to joining Lilly, Dr. Edgar was Co-Founder, Senior Vice President and the Chief Science & Technology Officer of Hypnion Inc (Lexington, MA) – a spin-out of the science and technologies he developed at Stanford University. Dr. Edgar led Hypnion’s preclinical and clinical research teams responsible for the identification and validation of novel pharmacological treatments for insomnia and disorders of excessive sleepiness. Hypnion was acquired by Eli Lilly & Company in April 2007. Prior to founding Hypnion in 2000, Dr. Edgar was Associate Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and Director of the Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology Laboratory in the Sleep Disorders Research Center, Stanford University School of Medicine. During his 15 years at Stanford University, Dr. Edgar achieved international recognition as a leader in sleep and circadian neurobiology and sleep-wake pharmacology. He is well known for his mentorship and training of young scientists, and his seminal contributions in sleep and circadian physiology, including the identification of wakefulness-promoting mechanisms controlled by the suprachiasmatic nucleus and opponent processes that modulate physiological sleepiness. Dr. Edgar is also the principal inventor of SCORE™, a computerized real-time sleep and physiological assessment technology and integrated pharmacological database that facilities drug discovery. Dr. Edgar served on the Harvard Medical School Division of Sleep Medicine Executive Council, the ASPIRE Advisory Committee at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, the NeuroNET Advisory Committee at UT Knoxville, and the Hypersomnolence Foundation Advisory Board. He also served as an officer of the Sleep Research Society (USA) and on Editorial Boards of the journal Sleep, and the Journal of Biological Rhythms. He has been the Principal Investigator of numerous NIH, DOD, and Industry partnership grants focused on sleep and circadian neurobiology, sleep-wake pharmacology, and pioneering work in drug phenotyping. He received his Master’s degree in Biology (Physiology) from San Jose State University while a NASA Graduate Research Fellow at the NASA-Ames Research Center, and received his doctorate in Biology/Physiology from the University of California, training at the Riverside and Davis Campuses, and the National Primate Research Center at UC Davis. He received post-doctoral training at Stanford University under Prof. William C. Dement. Dr. Edgar has published extensively, has numerous patents in sleep-wake drug discovery, and continues to educate on sleep health awareness and its importance to health care, public policy, and national security.