SAN DIEGO- The Military Health System Research Symposium (MHSRS) is the Department of Defense's (DoD), premier medical scientific meeting. This year it will be held in Kissimmee Florida, at the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center from September 12-15, 2022.

The meeting provides a venue for 3500 research colleagues to discuss new scientific findings resulting from military medical research and development representing all branches of the U.S. Armed Services, and various international collaborators. This year's conference theme focuses on optimizing readiness - the power of military medical research. The four day conference accommodates networking, rich discussion and provides an opportunity to inform command staff on cutting edge research at the highest levels of the Military Health System.

Scientists from the Naval Health Research Center (NHRC) will have 10 speaking presentations and 29 scientific poster showings during the conference, representing all three of the command's research directorates - Operational Readiness & Health, Military Population Health and Operational Infectious Diseases.

Dr. Rachel Markwald, senior research physiologist and head of the Sleep, Tactical, Efficiency and Endurance Laboratory (STEEL), will be one of NHRC’s prominent Principal Investigators speaking at the conference. She and her team have been working with Marines and Sailors onboard ships studying advanced technologies for sleep health monitoring – employing wearable devices to provide data for on demand management of fatigue related risk. “This work to build an infrastructure for sleep assessment using wearable devices will hopefully soon become the foundation for military leaders across the board to help monitor warfighter sleep, and provide a more advanced system to assist in leader decision making,” noted Markwald.

Dr. Andrew Kubala, research physiologist at NHRC's Warfighter Performance department, and one of Dr. Markwald's team leads on the Crew Readiness, Endurance and Watchstanding Study (CREW), will be honored as a plenary speaker and the recipient of the Young Investigator Award. Andrew will be speaking on Tuesday, September 13th at 4:30 PM on his authored work entitled, Severity of Sleep Disturbance and Sleep-Related Impairment of Sailors Aboard U.S. Navy Warships.

NHRC's mission is to optimize military operational readiness through cutting-edge research on warfighter, veteran, and family health. NHRC supports military mission readiness with research and development that delivers high-value, high-impact solutions to the health and readiness challenges our military population faces on the battlefield, at sea, on foreign shores and at home. NHRC's team of distinguished scientists and researchers consists of active-duty service members, federal civil service employees and contractors, whose expertise includes physiology, microbiology, psychology, epidemiology, and biomedical engineering.