Speaker Profile
Sleep is a pillar of human health, yet almost nothing in popular guidance explains why humans became the shortest-sleeping primate鈥攐r how that evolutionary story can improve our lives right now. David R. Samson is an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at the University of Toronto and author of The Sleepless Ape: The Story of Sleep in Human Evolution whose work addresses the central question of human uniqueness through the lens of sleep and circadian biology. He has built pioneering datasets on sleep architecture across lemurs, zoo orangutans, wild chimpanzees, and humans living in societies of different types and scales, revealing how our species engineered social and technological 鈥渟hells鈥� that made short, efficient sleep an advantage.
Samson translates these insights into clear, usable playbooks for organizations and communities. His talks connect evolutionary biology, psychology, and neuroscience to everyday decisions鈥攚ork hours, lighting, travel, shift rotations, classroom start times鈥攕o audiences leave with tools to realign energy, attention, and well-being.
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