The expert on pulmonary and sleep medicine, David Gozal, to be awarded the honorary doctorate by the UB

The patron of the ceremony will be the professor Ramon Farré, from the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. The extraordinary awards for the 2016/2017 bachelorsʼ degrees will be given during the ceremony, to be held at 12 noon in the Paranimph of the Historical Building. The activity will be live streamed on Youtube (UB channel) and Facebook (University page).

David Gozal is currently professor at the University of Missouri, being Marie M. and Harry L. Smith Endowed Chair and Chair of the Department of Child Health. His work is defined by two main scientific areas: the respiratory control and basic and translational aspects of sleep apnea. His initial work defined for the first time functional activation patterns of the brain during hypoxia and respiratory loading.

Gozal was the first researcher worldwide to conclusively demonstrate that sleep apnea in children led to an adverse academic performance, and that such highly important morbidity was partially reversible with treatment. In addition to these discoveries, Gozal also contributed to two important aspects of sleep apnea in children, namely diagnosis and treatment. The limited availability of paediatric sleep laboratories and inherent delays in the identification of children with sleep apnea prompted him to explore alternative diagnostic approaches. 

The impact of his scientific contributions translates into six-hundred international articles, more than 48,098 citations, and a 108 h-index. He was mentor of seventy international doctors, and took part in eighty international committees, apart from being member of thirty-four editing committees of scientific journals. He has been awarded forty-three distinctions for his intense career. Also, he recently  was the president of the prestigious American Thoracic Society (ATS).

Apart from his academic career, Gozal carried out a supporting task in developing countries. He collaborated in the organization of emergency of health and rural services in areas of Kurdistan, Iran, Cameroon and Peru. His scientific ties with the University of Barcelona through professor Ramon Farré appeared a decade ago and are still kept. One of his recent collaboration was the creation of low-cost respiratory care support devices for developing countries.