NeurotechEU Winter School on smart sleep: Exploring the future of sleep measurements
The NeurotechEU Winter School on Smart Sleep, organised by the Medical University of Innsbruck, will take place from 15th to 18th February 2027 at the MUI campus in Innsbruck, Austria.
This Winter School, organised by the Medical University of Innsbruck in collaboration with three other NeurotechEU partners (Radboud University, University of Reykjavik and Karolinska Institutet), explores how novel sleep technologies shape everyday life and clinical practice through at-home monitoring with wearables, nearables, and self-applied systems. Through lectures, hands-on labs, and team challenges, participants examine the technical, clinical, and translational dimensions of sleep technology, supported by expertise from four partner universities and industry.
Dates: One online kick-off meeting in January 2027 + On-site Winter School 15 – 18 February 2027
Location: On-site at the Medical University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
Who can apply?
We welcome applications from:
- Advanced bachelor's students
- Master’s students
- PhD students
Applicants should be affiliated with Karolinska Institutet (i.e., they need to be enrolled at or employed), and have a background (supported by transcript and CV) in neuroscience, psychology, biomedical engineering, computer science/data science, medicine, or related fields.
How to apply?
As a KI student, you will first need to apply internally. Please send the following documents to neurotech@ki.se:
- CV
- Transcript of records (Master students)
- Short motivation letter (≤400 words) describing interest in novel sleep technologies and goals for the course
- Endorsement letter (from your supervisor, mentor, teacher or similar)
Application deadline: 7th September 2026, 23.59. KI NeurotechEU will provide financial support to the selected KI students.
Please note: Successful candidates will have to apply directly to the Medical University of Innsbruck no later than 15th September 2026. The Medical University of Innsbruck will make the final selection of the 30 participants, being selected internally by KI does not guarantee a place in the Winter School.
About the Winter School
Each day combines foundational lectures on sleep physiology/pathophysiology, sensing principles, data quality and validation, with challenge-based projects. We bring together clinicians, neuroscientists, engineers, data scientists, and industry partners to discuss device architectures and signal acquisition; study design and validation frameworks; integration of subjective app-based measures with sensor data; translation and regulation; usability and compliance; and clinical decision support. An industry guest lecture from Nox Medical will address pathways from research to regulated products, including a case study in self-applied somnography. The course leverages NeurotechEU partners to provide a multi-perspective view, building competence for technology selection, end-to-end workflow design, and responsible, real-world implementation of at-home sleep monitoring.
Learning objectives
- Acquire core foundations in sleep physiology/pathophysiology and measurement modalities, and select/justify at-home technologies (wearables, nearables, self-applied) for specific clinical or research qu estions.
- Understand biomedical signal processing and AI methods to acquire, quality-check, analyze, and integrate multimodal sl eep data.
- Evaluate translation to practice by using sleep-society recommendations and regulatory principles to plan validation, usability/compliance, and clinical in tegration.
- Design and justify an evidence-based solution to a selected challenge (e.g., decision support for specific sleep disorder, designing approaches for sleep/dream modulation), addressing workflow, analyses pipelines and translation.
Lecturers:
- Priv.-Doz. Matteo Cesari (Department of Neurology, Medical University of Innsbruck),
- Prof. Anna Sigríður Islind, PhD (Department of Computer Science, Reykjavik University),
- Assoc. Prof. Martin Dresler(Donders Institute, Radboud University),
- Assoc. Prof. John Axelsson(Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet),
- guest lecturer from Nox Medical.
Students will be evaluated based on a final presentation of their challenge solution.