Teresa Paiva

Teresa Paiva is a Portuguese somnologist, neurologist, academic and author. She was head of neurology at the Hospital de Santa Maria in Lisbon and is clinical director of the Sleep Medicine Center in Lisbon. Teresa Paiva was born in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon in 1945. She graduated in medicine from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon in 1969 and obtained a doctorate in neurology and neurophysiology from the same university in 1977, having done an internship at the "TNO Institute of Medical Physics" in Utrecht, Netherlands. Since then, her career has concentrated on diseases related to sleep. She is recognised by the Portuguese Medical Association as having competence in neurology and neurophysiology and in sleep medicine. In 2012 she was appointed a "European Somnologist" by the European Sleep Research Society. From 1970, Paiva worked in various capacities at the Hospital de Santa Maria in Lisbon, retiring in 2006 as head of neurology, having been in that position since 1994. In 1976 she set up and ran the hospital's headache clinic, the first such unit in Portugal. From 1980 she was head of the hospital's electroencephalography (EEG) unit and in 1987 she set up its sleep consultation unit, having previously been involved with sleep consultation at the Centro de Estudos Egas Moniz, part of the University of Lisbon medicine faculty, where she introduced polysomnography. Paiva has been the clinical director of the Centro de Electroencefalografia e Neurofisiologia Clínica, more commonly known as the Sleep Medicine Center (CENC), in Lisbon since 1983. She continues to collaborate with the University of Lisbon, coordinating the master's course in sleep sciences from 2005 to 2012 She was an invited professor of the biomedical engineering course of the Instituto Superior Técnico of the university between 2003 and 2016 and continues to collaborate in the doctoral programme on environmental health. In her career she has coordinated 18 national or international scientific projects and six clinical trials.