Claire Dunbar

Research Associate

College of Medicine and Public Health

place Flinders Medical Centre

Claire Dunbar is a Research Associate and psychologist at the Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute - Sleep Health. Her primary interests include the behavioural treatment of sleep disorders and improving the health of the rural and wider community through high quality research and accessible community education opportunities. Her current research focuses on performance impairment as a result of sleep deprivation, improving the understanding and treatment of circadian and phase disorders in clinical and shift work personal and treating sleep difficulties in individuals living with chronic pain.

Qualifications

Claire Dunbar completed her Bachelor of Psychology Honours in 2019, and her PhD (Clinical Psychology) in 2023, supevised by Professor Leon Lack, Professor Peter Catcheside, Associate Professor Andrew Vakulin and Dr Gorica Micic. Her PhD work was funded from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) grant obtained by Professor Catcheside and her work focused on the assessment and effect of environmental noise disruption on sleep. Her project provided niche skills in the electroencephalographic measurement of brain activity during sleep and enabled high quality skills in clinical trial management.

She currently holds Post-Doctoral Research Associate status at FHMRI-sleep health on two projects. The first involves detecting driver sleepiness to prevent road trauma. The second focuses on understanding and early detection of sleep difficulties in early career first responder shift work personal. She is also employeed as a psychologist at the FHMRI Sleep Health Clinic focusing on the treatment of behavioural and circadian sleep disorders.

Honours, awards and grants

The Hospital Research Foundation (THRF) PhD scholarship recipient

Development Grant Recipient (2019), for the use of rural sleep health education dissemination

Australasian Sleep Association - Best Occupational Health and Safety Poster Presentation Award - Australian National Sleep conference 2023

Quiet Achiever Award - College of Medicine and Public Health 2023