Giulio Tononi received his medical degree from the University of Pisa, Italy, where he specialized in Psychiatry. After serving as a medical officer in the Army, he obtained a Ph.D. in neuroscience as a fellow of the Scuola Superiore for his work on sleep regulation. From 1990 to 2000, he was a member of The Neurosciences Institute, first in New York and then in San Diego. He is currently Professor of Psychiatry, Distinguished Professor in Consciousness Science, the David P. White Chair in Sleep Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Director of the Wisconsin Institute for Sleep and Consciousness. In 2005, he received the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award for his work on sleep. His laboratory studies consciousness and its disorders, as well as the mechanisms and functions of sleep.
