Dr Lukas Krone is a sleep neuroscientist and clinical somnologist. Originally a medical doctor from Germany, he now works as Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow between the Universities of Oxford (UK), Bern (CH), and Madison-Wisconsin (USA).
Dr Krone completed the preclinical part of medical school in his hometown, Würzburg (DE), achieving a percentile rank of 99.9% in the nationwide exam. He continued his medical studies with electives and research internships in Germany, Australia, Spain, Switzerland, the USA, and the UK, eventually earning a first-class medical degree from the University of Freiburg (DE). It was at the Sleep Medicine Centre Freiburg that he initiated his foray into sleep research through an MD project investigating the effects of non-invasive brain stimulation on sleep in both healthy volunteers and patients with insomnia.
Supported by a Wellcome Trust Doctoral Studentship, he pursued an MSc in Neuroscience at the University of Oxford, delving into the investigation of sleep regulatory mechanisms in fruit flies and mice, for which he won the Sherrington Prize in Neuroscience as the best student in class. During his DPhil project, conducted between the labs of Prof Vladyslav Vyazovskiy and Prof Zoltán Molnár under co-supervision by Prof Colin Akerman, his work revealed an essential role for the cerebral cortex in sleep regulation.
Subsequently, Dr Krone was awarded a stipendiary Junior Research Fellowship at Merton College, Oxford and a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship, allowing him to expand his work on the cellular mechanisms and neuronal circuits of cortical sleep regulation. His fellowship project is hosted by the lab of Prof Gero Miesenböck at the Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour and two international sponsors, Prof Antoine Adamantidis (University of Bern, CH) and Prof Chiara Cirelli (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA).
Dr Krone was president of the Oxford Neuroscience Society Cortex Club from 2017 to 2019. He represented the Free State of Bavaria at the 2011 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting and the University of Oxford at the 2021 Global Young Scientists Summit. His research has been bolstered by several competitive scholarships including the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, the Max-Weber-Programm Bayern, the Goodger and Schorstein Scholarship by the Medical Science Division Oxford, and a Mann Senior Scholarship in Physiology and Medicine by Hertford College, Oxford. Among several prizes and awards, he received the early investigator awards of the German, European, and World Sleep Society.
His long-term career aspirations include advancing our understanding of the regulation and functions of sleep. The aim of this basic research undertaking is to enable targeted modulation of sleep in humans.
His personal goal is to contribute to a healthy research environment in which scientific knowledge flourishes through equal opportunities, scientific rigor, transparency, and collaboration. To achieve this goal, Dr Krone actively engages in mentoring, teaching, public outreach, mental health campaigns, and open science initiatives.
