Congratulations to Professor Danny Eckert who was recently awarded the Meier-Ewert Prize for outstanding contributions to sleep medicine by the German Society of Dental Sleep Medicine.
At an award ceremony at the opera house (Alte Oper) in Frankfurt, Germany, Professor Eckert, Director of FHMRI Sleep Health/Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health received the prestigious Meier-Ewert Award from the Deutsche Gesellschaft Zahnarztliche Schlafmedizin (DGZS)—the German Society of Dental Sleep Medicine. The award is granted for outstanding research in the field of dental sleep medicine.
The DGZS inaugurated the Meier-Ewert Award in 2005 in honour of German neurologist, psychiatrist and sleep physician Prof. Karlheinz Meier-Ewert, who is credited for first publishing on mandibular advancement devices for people with sleep apnoea at the 7th European Sleep Research Society Congress in Munich in 1984. Mandibular advancement therapy is now the second most comment treatment for people with sleep apnoea, a chronic respiratory disorder that effects approximately 1 billion people globally.
On September 16-17th, 2022, the DGZS hosted its annual conference where Professor Eckert was the keynote speaker and delivered a presentation titled: “New directions for targeted therapy for obstructive sleep apnoea.” to showcase the collaborative sleep research conducted by the team at FHMRI Sleep Health/Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health. Professor Eckert was honoured for his contributions to the field of precision medicine for sleep apnoea including major contributions to understanding how mandibular advancement therapy works and which patients are most likely to respond based on his pioneering sleep apnoea endotyping approaches. This award follows on from the Pierre Robin Award which he received in 2019 from the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine for exceptional initiative and progress in the areas of education and academic research with original contributions to dental sleep medicine.
Further information about the Meier-Ewert Prize and its history can be found here.