Profile

As a Taiwanese living and working in the U.S., An-Yun Yeh can speak both English and Mandarin Chinese and be familiar with both types of culture. Her research area is cognitive performance and sleep in older adults. Human cognitive function has interested her since she took the bio-behavioral courses offered in her master’s program.

An-Yun was introduced to the influence of physiological factors (i.e., aging, sleep, or physical activities) and pathological problems (i.e., cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and cancer) on human cognition and, in turn, the impact on human functional status, self-care ability, and mortality. To explore her research interest more deeply, she was admitted to the University of Michigan School of Nursing PhD program in September 2009 and worked with Dr. Susan Pressler.

An-Yun's dissertation research topic was how sleep disturbances in healthy older adults relate to episodic memory performance. The results showed that episodic memory in healthy older adults was significantly related to sleep disturbances as well as other domains of cognition (i.e., executive function and cognitive reserve).

After obtaining her PhD degree, An-Yun started her post-doctoral training at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, working with Dr. Bunny Pozehl. Her post-doctoral training focused on NIH grant writing, actigraphy data re-coding, and analysis to compare the association of executive function with self-reported and objective sleep in heart failure patients, teaching, and post-master certificate training.