Mathias Basner, MD, PhD, MSc

Dr. Basner has performed several studies on the International Space Station and in space analog environments including NASA’s Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA), the Hawai’i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS), the Russian Mars500 simulated mission to Mars, and the Antarctic research stations Concordia, Neumayer III, and Halley. Dr. Basner was one of the 10 selected principal investigators of NASA’s TWINS study, in which Scott Kelly spent 340 days in space while his twin brother Mark Kelly, also a retired Astronaut, was investigated on Earth. In this interdisciplinary research project that spanned from molecular mechanisms to physiology and behavior, Dr. Basner was responsible for assessing cognitive performance in the twins. Dr. Basner’s project “Neurostructural and Cognitive Changes During Long Duration Low-Earth Orbit Missions: Cognition” was selected as one of 14 international projects to investigate the effects of long-duration spaceflight on 10 more astronauts. 

Dr. Basner was also one of 5 TRISH-funded investigators who participated in SpaceX’s historic all-commercial crew mission (Inspiration 4), where he investigated changes in cognitive performance and crew physiology in relation to the spacecraft environment. Dr. Basner is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) and a member of the Aerospace Medical Association (AsMA). 

Dr. Basner developed, together with his colleagues Dr. David F. Dinges and Dr. Ruben C. Gur and with collaborators from Pulsar Informatics Inc., the Cognition test battery for spaceflight. This development was funded by both NASA and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI). Cognition consists of 10 brief, validated cognitive tests that cover a range of cognitive domains. The tests were specifically designed for the high-performing Astronaut population. Brain regions primarily recruited by the individual test have been established with fMRI. The Cognition battery is part of NASA’s Behavioral Health and Performance Standard Measures, a set of measures that is routinely performed by all astronauts on ISS missions and by research subjects in space analog environments. In 2018, Dr. Basner was awarded the International Space Station Innovation Award for Cognition by the American Astronautical Society. In 2016, the original paper describing Cognition received the Journal Publication Award for the Most Outstanding Space Medicine Article published in the Aerospace Medicine and Human Performance Journal by the Space Medicine Association. In 2025, Dr. Basner was the recipient of the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal. 

Dr. Basner participated in several studies on the effects of acute and chronic sleep loss on neurobehavioral functions performed at the University of Pennsylvania. Together with David F. Dinges, he developed both a short version and an adaptive version of the Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT), identified the most sensitive outcome metrics of the PVT, developed new sensitive metrics, and showed that the PVT is indeed free of practice effects. Dr. Basner is also interested in how different work schedules affect sleep and performance. He participated in several large observational studies, intervention studies, and clinical trials investigating the effects of extended overnight shifts and protected sleep periods on sleep duration, sleepiness, and alertness of medical interns. In 2013 and 2014, he was a member of a Transportation Research Board of the National Academies committee studying FAA Air Traffic Controller staffing levels. Finally, Dr. Basner publishes frequently on the relationship between sleep time and waking activities using the publicly available American Time Use Survey (ATUS). He found a positive trend in sleep duration between 2003 and 2014 using ATUS data, which can likely be explained by a greater awareness of the importance of sufficient sleep in the population and by more online opportunities to shop, work, bank, and take classes from home. In the most recent ATUS analyses, Dr. Basner investigated the relationship between time spent exercising and sleeping and showed that these healthy behaviors are competing for time. Dr. Basner was part of an AASM panel that determined guiding principles for determining work shift duration and addressing the effects of work shift duration on performance, safety, and health.  An interview with Dr. Basner on “Sleep & Neurocognitive Performance” was featured in the journal Practical Neurology. Dr. Basner is member of the Sleep Research Society (SRS), he was Deputy Editor of the journal SLEEP, and he is currently Senior Associate Editor for the journal Sleep Health. 

Podcasts on sleep research that feature Dr. Basner include Live Long and Master Aging Podcast “Improving sleep hygiene for better health” and Unmessable Podcast by Tanya Privé “How To Boost Your Performance at Work and in Life, According to Science”.

Between 1999 and 2008, Dr. Basner conducted several large scale laboratory and field studies on the effects of traffic noise on sleep at the German Aerospace Center. For this research, Dr. Basner was awarded the German Aerospace Center Research Award in 2007 and the Science Award of the German Academy for Aviation and Travel Medicine in 2010. Dr. Basner developed an ECG-based algorithm for the automatic identification of autonomic activations associated with cortical arousal that was used in several field studies to non-invasively assess the effects of aircraft noise on sleep. He is currently funded by FAA to obtain current exposure-response functions describing the effects of aircraft noise on sleep for the United States. Dr. Basner has been an advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO) on the effects of traffic noise on sleep and health on a number of occasions. He performed a systematic evidence review on the effects of noise on sleep for the recently published revision of WHO’s Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region. Dr. Basner is currently President of the International Commission of Biological Effects of Noise (ICBEN) and member of the Impacts and Science Group of the Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection (CAEP) of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). He also represents the University of Pennsylvania in FAA’s Aviation Sustainability Center (ASCENT). Dr. Basner wrote editorials for Deutsches Ärzteblatt (in 2016 and 2019) and for the Journal of the American Heart Association on articles on the effects of traffic noise on health. In 2018, Dr. Basner was invited to give a TEDMED talk on the health effects of noise. Dr. Basner served as an advisor on an NSF-funded project titled “Developing the Processes and Potential to Engage Historically Underrepresented Communities in Public Participation in STEM Research Through Authentic and Impactful Collaboration” (NOISE Project). Podcasts on noise effects research that feature Dr. Basner include the United States Green Building Council Podcast “Built for Health: Acoustics and Sounds”;  99% Invisible Podcast “Sound and Health: Cities”; Futureproof Podcast by Jonathan McCrea “Futureproof Gold: Why Noise is Bad for You”; and This Is Your Brain with Dr. Phil Stieg Podcast “How noise affects our brains”. Dr. Basner is also featured on NPR's "the pulse" episode "Noise Annoys".   

View a complete list of Dr. Basner's publications chronologically by year or by citation.

The New Yorker: Can the Human Body Endure a Voyage to Mars?

TED Talk: Why noise is bad for your health -- and what you can do about it

Podcast: Exploration Medicine, "The Effects of Isolated, Confined and Extreme Environments on the Human Brain"

Podcast: This Is Your Brain With Dr. Phil Stieg, "How Noise Affects Our Brains"

Podcast: NPR's The Pulse, "How Noise Annoys"

Podcast: Stats + Stories, "The Best Friend on Friends"

• Dr. Basner received his degree in Medicine and his PhD in Research from the University of Bochum, Germany and his Master of Science in Epidemiology from the University of Bielefeld, Germany. Dr. Basner trained at the Institute for Applied Physiology at the University of Bochum and worked as a Research Associate at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Aerospace Medicine, Flight Physiology Division from 1999 until 2006 before moving to the United States to pursue his research interests in the neurobehavioral consequences of sleep loss as a Research Associate. He returned to DLR in 2008 to head the Flight Physiology Division for two years. In January 2010, Dr. Basner assumed the position of Assistant Professor of Sleep and Chronobiology in Psychiatry and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2015 and to Full Professor in 2020. He was appointed Director of the Behavioral Regulation and Health Section of the Department of Psychiatry in 2019.

Honors and Awards

• In September 2025, Dr. Basner was awarded the Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). This prestigious agency award was established in 1961 to recognize individual or team efforts that lead to a key scientific discovery, a fundamental contribution to a scientific field, or a significant enhancement of scientific understanding. Former recipients include multiple Nobel laureates.

Additional Affiliations

• President, International Commission of Biological Effects of Noise (ICBEN)
• Member, Impacts and Science Group of the Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection (CAEP) of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)
• Investigator, University of Pennsylvania in FAA’s Aviation Sustainability Center (ASCENT)

Dr. Basner sometimes engages in projects that could be considered “odd”, but always have the goal to highlight scientific principles.

Does sleep science stand the test of time? Revisiting Kohlschütter's 1862 research on sleep depth.

In 2010, Dr. Basner published a manuscript titled “Arousal threshold determination in 1862: Kohlschütter’s Measurements on the Firmness of Sleep” in the journal Sleep Medicine. Ernst Kohlschütter was the first to systematically use sounds of varying intensity he generated with a pendular hammer hitting a thick slate slab to investigate the depth of sleep. Dr. Basner re-analyzed Kohlschütter’s raw data with modern regression techniques and compared them with a study on the effects of aircraft noise on sleep in 128 subjects.

Chandler, Joey, Monica, Phoebe, Rachel or Ross? A systematic analysis to find the best Friend. 

Dr. Basner and his family systematically scored positive and negative friendship deeds across all 236 episodes of the TV series Friends and found that Joey was the best Friend, closely followed by Ross. The analysis was published in Significance, a magazine of the Royal Statistical Society and the American Statistical Association. Here, Dr. Basner concludes: “Many of our decisions and views are governed by gut feelings, with very limited understanding of and control over what constitutes those feelings. Gut feelings are important and have served us (mostly) well on our evolutionary journey. However, they can also be misleading. Therefore, it can be helpful to identify a quantitative approach for a problem and gather the necessary data in a way that minimizes bias. The data may reveal aspects of the outcome of interest that are inaccessible by other techniques (like opinion polls). Importantly, the data generated can be objectively scrutinized by others, and thus become the basis of further discussion and informed decision making.” This analysis was also featured in a Stats + Stories Podcast.

Avoiding a Christmas Catastrophe: Rudolph the Bright-White-Nosed Reindeer? A Nap for Saint Nick? An analysis of global fatigue-related sleigh crash risk analysis.

Together with colleagues from WSU, Dr. Basner published an Editorial in the journal Sleep Health titled “Seasonal night-work with extended hours and transmeridian travel: An analysis of global fatigue-related sleigh crash risk analysis”. Santa Claus’ delivery route was extracted from the North American Aerospace Defense Command and it was determined that sleigh crash risk was highest over North America. While fun is a big part of the article, it highlights many principles of fatigue risk management systems that are important for mitigating the risks of duty schedules that include extended work periods or rotating shifts.