Dr. Billy A. Caceres, PhD, FAHA, FAAN is an Assistant Professor at the School of Nursing at Columbia University. His program of research uses biobehavioral approaches to identify social determinants of cardiovascular and sleep health in marginalized populations across the lifespan.

He is currently the Principal Investigator of several studies that use mobile health (mHealth) technology to understand the influence of adverse life experiences on the health of marginalized adults. He is the Principal Investigator of a Data Science Institute seed grant. This pilot study will use data science techniques to leverage consumer sleep technology and ecological momentary assessment to study sleep health in Black and Latinx sexual and gender minority adults. Dr. Caceres and colleagues will assess the feasibility of completing 30 days of electronic diaries and actigraphy to explore the associations of day-to-day experiences of discrimination with sleep outcomes (such as sleep duration and wake after sleep onset). Using a data-driven approach the research team will phenotype individuals’ sleep health profiles, which will help determine if findings support the need to develop precision sleep health interventions tailored to their unique experiences.

Dr. Caceres is a fellow of the American Heart Association, American Academy of Nursing, and New York Academy of Medicine. In 2020 he was the recipient of the National Institutes of Health’s Sexual and Gender Minority Early-Stage Investigator Award.