About Us
CET's mission is to serve patients, consumers, health care providers and workplace managers to:
- Educating the public, students and professionals about effective use of environmental therapies.
- Offering authoritative information on non-medication treatments for seasonal affective disorder, nonseasonal depression and circadian rhythm sleep disorders.
- Fostering research on environmental interventions that promote alertness, energy, and performance — while combating fatigue, stress, depression and sleep disturbances that affect millions of people.
The Organization
The Center for Environmental Therapeutics is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization
founded in 1994 in response to accelerating international interest in new environmental
therapies. The Center is made up of a multidisciplinary team of eminent researchers
and clinicians — experts in mental health, ophthalmology and optical physics,
electrical engineering, biochemistry, physiology and gerontology — who are committed
to pooling their efforts toward the development and application of effective
environmental therapies.
The People
Dr. Michael Terman
President of CET, was graduated from Columbia University and received his doctoral
degree in physiological psychology from Brown University in 1968. He is Professor
of Clinical Psychology in Psychiatry at Columbia, Research Scientist VI at the
New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI), and Director of the Center for
Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.
For the first part of his career, Michael concentrated on laboratory studies
of biological rhythms and sensory perception in animals, especially their
reactions to daily cycles of light and darkness. In the early 1980's, when
such effects were first demonstrated in humans, he turned in a clinical direction,
with studies of the antidepressant effects of light therapy, sponsored by the
National Institute of Mental Health. He joined the faculty of Columbia’s College
of Physicians and Surgeons and NYSPI, where he established the Clinical
Chronobiology and Winter Depression Programs, in which several hundred patients
have participated in treatment trials and studies of physiological responses.
This work led to a set of new non-drug therapies including 10,000 lux light,
dawn/dusk simulation and high-density negative air ionization. In 1988, he
was a co-founder with Anna Wirz-Justice of the Society for Light Treatment
and Biological Rhythms (SLTBR), which he served as President (1991-93). With
Douglas Holmes, Gustave Manasse and Cynthia Neely, he founded CET in 1994.
Michael chaired the Task Force on Light Treatment for Sleep Disorders (American
Academy of Sleep Medicine and SLTBR), and currently serves on the editorial
board of the Journal of Biological Rhythms.
In a 35+ year collaboration with his wife, Dr. Jiuan Su, the Terman lab has
produced more than 200 scientific publications.
Dr. Anna Wirz-Justice
Anna Wirz-Justice is emeritus Professor and Research Fellow at the Centre for
Chronobiology, Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Basel.
She received a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from University College London.
Anna initially worked on circadian rhythms in animals and the effects of
psychiatric medications on neurotransmitter receptor and rest-activity rhythms.
The Basel clinic was one of the first to extensively study the antidepressant
effects of sleep deprivation in the early ‘70s, immediately after Burkhard
Pflug’s pioneering discovery. During a fellowship at the U.S. National
Institute of Mental Health, she and Thomas Wehr, M.D. carried out the first
sleep phase advance experiment in a bipolar patient. Anna introduced light
therapy to Europe, followed up with more than 20 years of research on seasonal
affective disorder and light therapy. In the constant routine sleep laboratory –
where the subject stays awake in bed for more than a day – together with Kurt
Kräuchi and Christian Cajochen, the focus has been on thermophysiology
(warm feet to fall asleep) and the sleep and waking EEG in young and older subjects.
Actimetry – automated recording of body movement – in psychiatric patients
yields fascinating insights into circadian dysregulation in a wide variety of
disorders that might be amenable to improvement with light therapy.
Anna is a former president of the Society for Light Treatment and Biological
Rhythms. A prestigious Anna-Monika-Prize with Thomas Wehr recognised their
seminal work in the chronobiology of depressive illness. In 2002, she received
the Scholar's Prize of the City of Basel, awarded for outstanding scientific
career achievement.
In a thematically relevant avocation, she has interacted with architects to
enhance the circadian impact of indoor lighting. In 2002 she was a consultant
to Philippe Rahm and Jean-Gilles Décosterd in creating their light room in the
Swiss Pavillion at the Venice Bienniale, Physiological Architecture.
Anna is director of CET's Chronotherapeutics Consultants, formed in 2004 to
advise hospital psychiatrists on the implementation of light and wake therapies
as adjuncts to drug treatment of major depression. Most recently, she lead a
team including Francesco Benedetti and Michael Terman to the field’s first
treatment manual for clinicians, Chronotherapeutics for Affective Disorders.
Dr. Francesco Benedetti
Francesco Benedetti MD (University of Modena, 1991) is Head of the Psychiatry
and Clinical Neurosciences research group at the San Raffaele Hospital in
Milano, and contract professor of Psychiatry and of General Psychopathology
at the University Vita-Salute San Raffaele.
His clinical research group gathers researchers working at the interface between
neuroscience and behavioral disorders. Areas of expertise encompass clinical
psychobiology, brain imaging, genetics of response to psychiatric treatments,
pharmacology, neuropsychology, neurophysiology, and and genetic correlates of
psychopathological conditions.
In the last 15 years he and his group have developed clinical chronotherapeutics
of mood disorders into a practicable everyday method for the psychiatric ward,
particularly focussing on bipolar disorder. Beginning with sleep deprivation,
they added sleep phase advance, light therapy, different medications to see
if the rapid response could be maintained. They found that the same gene
polymorphisms that hinder clinical response to antidepressants affect the
response to chronotherapeutics in a similar fashion. At the functional MRI
level, those selective regions of the brain that are modified by improvement
on antidepressants also are the ones involved in chronotherapeutic response.
These multiple approaches provide an important scientific database to document
efficacy and mechanisms of action of non-pharmacological antidepressant methods.
Francesco is a member of CET's Chronotherapeutics Consultants, and was the major
clinical expert in writing our treatment manual, Chronotherapeutics for Affective Disorders.
Dr. Gustave Manasse
Dr. Gustave Manasse received the Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Columbia
University. His dissertation, "Self-Regard as a Function of Environmental Demands
in Chronic Schizophrenics," presaged a career-long focus on non-pharmacological
factors that facilitate social adaptation and behavioral success in the face of
background disturbances.
Gus served on the staff of Hillside Hospital, Queens,
before moving to the City University of New York, where he served for 20 years
as a Director of Counseling and Psychological Services. He is now Professor
Emeritus of Psychology.
In the 1980's, Gus coached Michael Terman's transition
from the laboratory to the clinic. In addition to his organizing role in CET,
Dr. Manasse was a founder and serves on the Board of Directors of New Horizons,
a community and residential training facility for the developmentally disabled,
operating in Orange and Dutchess Counties with headquarters in Poughkeepsie, NY.
Dr. Dan Oren
Dr. Dan Oren received the M.D. degree, with specialty in Psychiatry, from Yale
Medical School, where he serves as an Associate Professor of Psychiatry (Adjunct).
He is Medical Director at Birmingham Group Health Services in Ansonia, Connecticut.
Following a fellowship in the Clinical Psychobiology Branch
of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, he worked as a grants specialist
in their extramural research program and as an analyst at the Food and Drug
Administration. He has served as chair of the FDA's Psychopharmacology Advisory
Panel.
Dan's research and clinical interests include seasonal, atypical, chronic
and resistant depression, clinical psychopharmacology, light therapy, sleep
disorders and circadian rhythm disturbances. He has written numerous scientific
articles and book chapters, and is lead author of "How to Beat Jet Lag: A Practical
Guide for Air Travelers."
He is a former president of the Society for Light Treatment
and Biological Rhythms. Dan serves as Medical Director of CET's Chronotherapeutics
Consultants, formed in 2004 to advise the hospital and managed care industries
on the implementation of light and wake therapies as adjuncts to drug treatment
of major depression.
Elaine Tricamo, R.N.
Elaine Tricamo was graduated from Queens College with majors in Psychology
and English Literature. Her part-time employment throughout college, working
with emotionally disturbed children, led to a full-time profession as a Special
Education teacher at a school for schizophrenic adolescents and a career-long
interest in the role biology plays in mental illness.
She joined the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) at Columbia University Medical Center in
1976 (the very same year that marked the Institute's shift from a psychoanalytic
orientation to an emphasis on biological psychiatry) where she served for 15 years
as administrator of the Depression Evaluation Service.
Throughout her years of monitoring clinical trials and data collection for many outstanding psychiatric
researchers in a variety of investigative areas, she eventually became part of the
process of designing studies and writing grant proposals. She met Michael Terman
in the early 1980's when she oversaw the data collection for his first clinical
trial of the antidepressant effect of light therapy. Following her service at
NYSPI, she became a clinical associate in private practice, combining her experience
in short-term psychotherapies with her expertise in psychopharmacology.
She is a member of the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology.
Dr. Klaus Martiny
Klaus Martiny, MD, PhD, Specialist in Psychiatry, works as a researcher at the
Psychiatric Research Unit, Mental Health Centre North Zealand, University
Hospitals of Copenhagen.
His main research interest focuses on chronotherapeutic
treatments as monotherapy or as add-ons to psychopharmacologic treatment
for depression. His studies have included a multilevel approach to outcome
measures across biological, pharmacokinetic, psychometric and psychosocial
levels. He has conducted a series of chronotherapeutic studies using light
and sleep deprivation, funded by government grants.
He is a board member
of the Society of Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms (SLTBR) and the
Danish Sleep Medicine Society.
Dr. Thomas White
Thomas White, MD, MS, MA, is an informatics researcher and healthcare executive.
He is Director of the Bureau of Mental Health Informatics for New York State
Office of Mental Health, and an Associate Professor of Mental Health Informatics
at Columbia University.
His main research focus is developing the infrastructures
and methods needed to accelerate the pace of translational research for mental
health. This has involved identifying and overcoming barriers to faster instrument
and protocol development, data collection and sharing, analysis, and display of
data in ways that are conveniently implemented by researchers, clinicians, and
executives. He has developed software suites used internationally for
neuroelectrophysiology, functional brain imaging, disease management, and
structured interviewing.
He has also consulted for the US Dept. of Health &
Human Services to tackle national challenges with data standards. His Dialogix
interviewing system hosts the CET instruments, and he has led the analysis of
those data for geographical and environmental correlates of SAD.
Dr. Konstantin V. Danilenko
Konstantin V. Danilenko, MD, is a biomedical researcher at the Institute of Internal
Medicine, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Novosibirsk,
Russia.
His main research interest focuses on the light physiology in humans.
He has conducted a series of fundamental and clinical studies on retinal sensitivity,
biological clock and melatonin secretion, winter depression and reproductive function,
with support from colleagues from abroad and international grants.
He has been a
member of the Society for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms (SLTBR) since 1989,
and serves on its Board of Directors.
Dr. Joseph Wu
Joseph Wu earned his MD from the University of California Irvine and completed
his residency in psychiatry with honors also at the University of California,
Irvine.
He is the author of over 50 peer reviewed articles on neuropsychiatry
on topics such as depression, sleep deprivation, schizophrenia, traumatic brain
injury, Alzheimer’s disease, and brain imaging. He has been the recipient of
National Institutes of Health and the National Alliance for Research in
Schizophrenia and Depression funding on the topic of sleep deprivation and
depression.
He has studied sleep deprivation effects on brain metabolic
activity using positron emission tomography (PET) scans in both healthy subjects
and depressed patients. He is especially interested in the therapeutic use of
sleep deprivation (also known as wake therapy) in conjunction with other
chronotheraputic measures such as light therapy, to accelerate the treatment
of depression. Another focus is on how sleep deprivation affects neuropsychological
functions such as attention.
Dr. Claude Gronfier
Claude Gronfier received his PhD in neuroscience from the University Louis Pasteur
(Strasbourg, France) in 1998. During a fellowship at Harvard Medical School, he
studied the consequences of having an internal biological clock improperly reset
by light, and how to maintain synchrony with the light-dark cycle in extreme
conditions such as spaceflight.
In 2003, he joined an Inserm laboratory (French
National Institute of Health and Biomedical Research) as Chargé de Recherche
(Senior Research Associate). His current projects focus on light’s mechanisms
of action on the biological clock, and sleep disorders in conditions such as
ocular pathology, neurodegenerative disease, aging and mood disorders.
He is a board member of the French Society of Research and Sleep Medicine and the
Society for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms, and he serves on two technical
committees of the Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage (CIE TC 6-62 and TC 6-63).
Claude is co-author of the recent book for the French public, En finir avec
le blues de l'hiver et les troubles du rythme veille-sommeil (Marabout, 2008).
Dr. Janet B.W. Williams
Janet B.W. Williams, MS, DSW, is Vice President of Clinical Development at
MedAvante, Inc., a company committed to enhancing signal detection in clinical
trials by using centralized clinical evaluators. She is also Professor Emerita
of Clinical Psychiatric Social Work in the Departments of Psychiatry and
Neurology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
She is retired as a Research Scientist and Deputy Chief of the Biometrics Research
Department at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where she first started
working with Drs. Terman and White. Dr. Williams is well known for her work in
developing psychiatric classifications and instruments to measure psychopathology.
She is an author of more than 240 scholarly publications, serves on the editorial
boards of several psychiatric and social work journals, and has been listed since
2002 as an ISI Highly-Cited Researcher in Psychology/Psychiatry.
She is an
Honorary Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, a fellow of the
American Psychopathological Association, and a member of the American College
of Neuropsychopharmacology, the nation's premier professional society in brain,
behavior, and psychopharmacology research.
Dr. Farhad Hafezi
Farhad Hafezi completed his medical studies and medical doctorate in Bern in 1992.
From 1993 to 1994, he attended a two-year course in experimental medicine and
biology at the ETH Zurich (nowadays MSc Biology), followed by three years as a
scientific post-doc in the Laboratory for Retinal Cell Biology in Zurich, Switzerland
where his research focused on molecular mechanisms of retinal degeneration.
In his residency (1997-2000),
he clinically focused on the anterior segment and corneal and refractive laser surgery.
This choice of subspecialty led him to convert his research to the anterior segment.
He is an associate Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Zurich and
completed his PhD thesis at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam in 2008.
Dr. Hafezi
has published 35 peer-reviewed articles and 32 book chapters, reviews and case reports.
He has received nine national and international awards and is an Editorial
Board Member of the Journal of Refractive Surgery and the Iranian Journal of
Ophthalmology.
Dr. Charlotte Remé
Charlotte Remé founded the laboratory of retinal cell biology within the setting
of the University Eye Clinic Zurich (head: Prof. Rudolf Witmer) in the late
1970’s. At that time, it was very unusual and foresighted to establish a basic
science laboratory within a clinic in Europe.
After medical school and residencies in pathology and ophthalmology in Germany,
Dr. Remé joined the Eye Clinic Zurich. She then pursued a postdoctoral training
with Richard W. Young at UCLA working on the renewal mechanisms of retinal
photoreceptors. This research led to the discovery of autophagy, a cellular
mode of removing or recycling cytoplasmic constituents.
After her return to Zurich, she began pioneering work on retinal circadian rhythms
together with her colleagues Anna Wirz-Justice and Michael Terman. Later, her
studies were focused on the deleterious effects of bright light in the retina.
This work led to the discovery that light can induce the gene-regulated cell
death by apoptosis. She and her team of postdoctoral fellows elucidated molecular
mechanisms of retinal apoptosis and discovered the first gene directly involved
in retinal apoptosis.
Over thirty years later, the laboratory is nationally and internationally
recognized as one of the top institutions working on mechanisms of retinal
degeneration and neuroprotection. And, the laboratory has grown and expanded
to include work on neuroprotection, visual pigment interactions and the generation
of mouse models for retinal degenerations.
As recognition for her outstanding achievement and scientific contribution,
Dr. Remé received a number of international prizes throughout her career.
Specifically, ARVO awarded Dr. Remé the Proctor Medal, which is the highest
award in basic ophthalmological science.
Dr. John Gottlieb
Dr. John Gottlieb received his undergraduate degree from Oberlin College,
attended medical school at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and completed
a residency in psychiatry at Yale University in New Haven, CT.
He is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Feinberg School of Medicine
of Northwestern University in Chicago, IL. In his university position, John
has been actively involved in residency education and supervision.
In addition, he is the Medical Director of Chicago Psychiatry Associates, a
group practice specializing in the evaluation and treatment of cyclic mood
disorders. He is a member of the Training and Curriculum Committee of the International
Society for Bipolar Disorders.
John’s clinical focus on bipolar disorders led
to his interest in both the circadian underpinnings of affective disturbances
and the use of biological rhythm-modifying interventions to treat these
conditions. He is skilled in the use of Interpersonal Social Rhythm Therapy,
light and wake therapy, and other chronotherapeutic strategies. John's
current research focus is on circadian phase variation in bipolar illness.
Oliver Stefani, M.Eng
Oliver Stefani works at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering (IAO).
His research activities are focused on the interaction between light and humans,
including cognitive, biological and emotional factors and how this can be deployed
at office workplaces.
Oliver studied micro-engineering with the focus on optics and light. Until 1998
he worked in an optics-laboratory on polymer optical fibres. After his Masters Degree
in Design he developed a 3D-projectionsystem at the University of Stuttgart for
which he received the first price for technology management. He was head of the
visualisation lab at the Center of Applied Technologies in Neuroscience in Basel.
Together with Christian Cajochen he evaluated human reactions on displays with a
LED backlight. The LED backlight having increased light emission at 464 nm caused
significantly less tiredness compared to a standard display.
He is currently developing a Circadian Effective Display. He also developed “Helisosity”
a dynamic multispectral light source, the “nLightenend Workplace” which integrates
illumination and information displays and “Virtual Sky”, a light ceiling based on
35000 LEDs capable of simulating a blue sky with passing clouds.
Oliver teaches „Light and Colour“ at the University in Luzern and at the Stuttgart
State Academy of Art and Design.
Nikki L.K. Hafezi
Nikki L.K. Hafezi provides fundraising and business development services to
non-profit organizations and academic institutions in the biomedical field
throughout Europe and the United States.
She is currently the managing director
of GroupAdvance Consulting GmbH in Zurich, Switzerland. In the United States,
Mrs. Hafezi served as the industrial liaison officer for a multi-institutional
biomedical research collaboration in Los Angeles, California funded by the
National Science Foundation.
Earlier, Mrs. Hafezi served as a development
executive for a private hospital and a national public health agency. Mrs.
Hafezi graduated with an English and Spanish degree from UCLA and just
completed her master’s degree in intellectual property at the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology (ETH ZH).
She resides with her husband and daughter
in Zurich, Switzerland. Nikki Hafezi is an independent consultant and serves
as the Director of Development of CET. Her role includes guiding CET in
the transition from a charity to a non-profit organization and helping CET
achieve its goals of enhancing research and education in the field of
environmental therapeutics.
Markus Haberstroh
Markus Haberstroh studied architecture at the University of Applied Sciences in Aargau,
Switzerland, graduating in 2001. From 2001 to 2004 he worked with Herzog & de Meuron
Basel as Project Manager on various projects and competitions in Europe. In 2005 he
accomplished his civilian-service at the Center for Chronobiology in Basel where he
became acquainted with the connection between architecture and chronobiology. During
his civilian service he designed and constructed the website of the Center for Chronobiology
Basel as well as CET’s website.
When he returned to his field in 2006 he continued administering CET’s website and
constantly expanded CET’s Web presence until today. In 2009 Markus started his
own architectural practice in Basel. One of his main goals is to investigate new
applications for optimal daylight use in buildings, in order to improve comfort
and reduce energy consumption.
Dr. Michael J. B. Krieger
Dr. Krieger got his master’s in biology from the University of Basel (Switzerland),
based on research he performed at the University of Oxford, England. Before he enrolled
as a Ph.D. student at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) he worked as a
free-lance programmer for Novartis. His Ph.D. thesis included research in the
field of molecular biology, population genetics, animal behavior, and robotics.
After finishing his Ph.D. with honors (summa cum laude), he completed a three-year
post-doc at the University of Georgia, followed by a year as
Research Associate. In 2003, he obtained the prestigious and competitive
“Rockefeller Fellow” position at the Rockefeller University in New York
where he developed software that supports the design, simulation, and
analysis of complex systems.
In 2007, Dr. Krieger returned to Switzerland where he enrolled in the intellectual
property master’s program at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH).
After successfully completing his master’s degree in 2008, he joined
GroupAdvance Consulting GmbH as Chief Scientific Officer (CSO).
Dr. Krieger is an accomplished scientist. He has published over 25 peer-reviewed
scientific publications, of which 14 as first or corresponding author. Two of his
first author publications made the cover page of the prestigious scientific
journals Science and Nature. He also has been an invited speaker to several
international congresses, among others, to the International Congress of
Genetics and the Gordon Research Conference.
Through his 10-year experience as an active researcher he acquired not only a broad
understanding of modern science but also gained detailed knowledge of the inner workings
of research institutions and funding bodies. He is supporting CET to achieve its
goals of enhancing research and education in the field of environmental
therapeutics.