Dr. Hosein Aghayan Golkashani

Hosein is a clinician-scientist (MD, PhD, MPH) whose research bridges sleep science, clinical medicine, public health, and digital health. His work focuses on understanding how sleep and circadian health influence cognition, mental health, and chronic disease, with particular interest in neuropsychiatric conditions and healthy aging. He has led and contributed to multidisciplinary studies using polysomnography, wearable technologies, and longitudinal multimodal data to study sleep and health in real-world settings. His research also includes the development and validation of wearable and digital health technologies for personalized monitoring and intervention. Beyond academia, he has experience in entrepreneurship and digital health startups, including developing and evaluating emerging healthcare technologies and translating research into real-world applications.


His interest in sleep comes from its unique position at the intersection of mental health, behavior, and physical health, and its potential to serve as a modifiable target for both prevention and treatment. His long-term goal is to translate sleep and digital biomarkers into proactive, personalized, and just-in-time interventions that can improve mental and physical health at both the individual and population levels.

Education

  • MD-MPH | Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences

  • PhD | Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore

  • Postdoctoral Research Fellow | Centre for Sleep & Cognition, National University of Singapore

Selected Publications

For Full list of publications & citations and recent work, see Google scholar page

  • Yilmaz G, Ghorbani S, Ong JL, Golkashani HA, et al. (2026). Vascular age estimation using a consumer wearable sleep tracker. PLOS Digital Health. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pdig.0001329

  • Massar SAA, Chua XY, Leong R, Golkashani HA, et al. (2024). Sleep, well-being, and cognition in medical interns on a float or overnight call schedule. JAMA Network Open, 7(10), e2438350. 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.38350

  • Ong JL, Golkashani HA, Ghorbani S, Wong KF, Chee NIYN, et al. (2024). Selecting a sleep tracker from EEG-based, iteratively improved, low-cost multisensor, and actigraphy-only devices. Sleep Health, 10(1), 9–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2023.11.005

  • Willoughby AR, Golkashani HA, Ghorbani S, Wong KF, Chee NIYN, et al. (2024). Performance of wearable sleep trackers during nocturnal sleep and periods of simulated real-world smartphone use. Sleep Health, 10(3), 356–368. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2024.02.007

  • Ghorbani S, Golkashani HA, Chee NIYN, et al. (2022). Multi-night at-home evaluation of improved sleep detection and classification with a memory-enhanced consumer sleep tracker. Nature and Science of Sleep, 14, 645–660. https://doi.org/10.2147/NSS.S359789

  • Chee NIYN, Ghorbani S, Golkashani HA, Leong RLF, Ong JL, Chee MWL. (2021). Multi-night validation of a sleep tracking ring in adolescents compared with a research actigraph and polysomnography. Nature and Science of Sleep, 13, 177–190.  https://doi.org/10.2147/NSS.S286070

  • Aghayan Golkashani H, Leong RLF, Wong KF, Chee MWL. (2021). Schema-driven memory benefits boost transitive inference in older adults. Psychology and Aging, 36(4), 463. https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000586

  • Golkashani HA, Leong RLF, Ghorbani S, Ong JL, Fernández G, Chee MWL. (2022). A sleep schedule incorporating naps benefits the transformation of hierarchical knowledge. Sleep. DOI: 10.1093/sleep/zsac025

  • Golkashani HA, Ghorbani S, Leong RLF, Ong JL, Chee MWL. Advantage Conferred by Overnight Sleep on Schema-related Memory May Last Only a Day. Sleep Advances. DOI: 10.1093/sleepadvances/zpad019

Awards & Honors

For complete list of Awards & Honors, see full Curriculum Vitae

  • SINGA Scholarship, PhD Scholarship, National University of Singapore

  • Physician of the Year, Excellence in Healthcare Delivery & Public Health Management

  • 1st Place, State Educational Olympiad in Clinical Reasoning

  • 2nd Place, National Olympiad of Bioethics, Professionalism & Legal Issues in Medicine

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