The Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) at Penn State announces the addition of a new associate director, Orfeu M. Buxton.
Buxton is a professor of biobehavioral health in the College of Health and Human Development. He is also a cofunded faculty member of SSRI. His research primarily addresses the causes of chronic sleep deficiency in the workplace, home, and society; the health consequences of chronic sleep deficiency; the physiologic and social mechanisms by which these outcomes arise; and translational interventions.
Buxton joined the Penn State faculty in 2014 after more than a decade conducting research at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, investigating the biological and behavioral effects of sleep restriction and circadian disruption. His academic training includes a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Northwestern University and postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago in sleep and neuroendocrinology.
Drawn by the University’s collaborative research environment and strong programs in population health, Buxton came to Penn State to expand his work on real-world sleep measurement and public health. Since arriving, he has helped lead interdisciplinary projects on workplace policies, family health, and sleep equity, contributing to national conversations on how structural factors influence our opportunities for restorative sleep.
A leading researcher in the field of sleep and circadian health, Buxton directs the Sleep, Health & Society Collaboratory at Penn State. They’ve completed and conducted ongoing interdisciplinary and translational human studies in free-ranging humans of all ages address sleep health, cardiometabolic risk, cognition, disparities, and wellbeing across the life course including large studies such as the Work, Family and Health Network, the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Sleep Substudy, and the Einstein Aging Study. Buxton has also contributed to national research efforts aimed at improving population health through better understanding of sleep-related behaviors and policies such as school start times.
Buxton recently served as the Editor in Chief of Sleep Health since 2019. He was awarded the Elizabeth Fenton Susman Professorship of Biobehavioral Health (2020-2025), and the 2024 Evan G. and Helen G. Pattishall Outstanding Research Achievement Award, College of Health & Human Development. Since 2022, he has served as an associate director of the Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute.
In his new role, Buxton will contribute to SSRI’s leadership by helping to support collaborative research, develop strategic initiatives and advance the social and behavioral sciences at Penn State.