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Briana Taylor
Research Assistant Professor
Briana Taylor is a research assistant professor at the Roux Institute and in the Psychology Department at Northeastern University. Taylor earned her PhD in Biological and Health Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. During her doctoral work, Taylor studied the relevance of sleep and circadian rhythms for health and functioning.
Prior to joining the Roux Institute, Taylor was a faculty scientist at MaineHealth where she focused on sleep disruption and circadian phase delay in youth with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Taylor’s current work seeks to understand the mechanistic role of sleep and circadian phase in challenging behaviors exhibited by ASD youth and the extent to which modifiable features of sleep and the circadian system can be leveraged to improve daytime functioning. In addition, Taylor focuses on non-invasive approaches to measure and monitor sleep and circadian functioning using ambulatory and passive biosensors in naturalistic settings. This work serves to increase the scalability and ecological validity of sleep and circadian science and to make this field more accessible to populations that are unable to tolerate traditional, gold-standard sleep and circadian measurement methodologies. In collaboration with research faculty at the Roux Institute, Taylor seeks to develop a computational sleep science program that utilizes 24-hour ambulatory and passive data collection tools to better understand dynamic associations between physiology, behavior, and mental/physical health outcomes.