Washington State University has just announced that it's shipping Regents Professor James Krueger from Pullman to the downtown Spokane campus. Why does this matter? Because Krueger, a leading researcher into how sleep and brain activity, will bring his people, his knowledge and his $15 million in federal funding (since 1997) to what's already one of the nation's leading sleep research centers.
"Not only will Jim's move to the Riverpoint Campus consolidate the critical mass of sleep research in Spokane," vice provost for health sciences Bryan Slinker said in a press release, “it will also increase overall research activity on campus, which is one of the building blocks required for the development of the full medical education program we envision."
That full program being a four-year medical school (Spokane only supplies three years of medical education now), something city leaders have been gushing about for over a year.
Earlier this year, I reported on some really cool research conducted by WSU-Spokane's sleep center, turned on its head the scientific community's understanding of how the brain's ability to make decisions breaks down when the body tires.
