News and Updates
October 2025
Cape Town Finishes Baseline fMRI Data Collection
The fMRI component of our study - which only occurs in Cape Town - has been successfully completed!
Over the past several months, 45 participants took part in brain imaging sessions at CUBIC, located in the Neuroscience Institute at UCT. During these sessions, we captured detailed images of the brain while participants played a fun, interactive game that we designed.
The data will help us understand how sleep patterns may shape the way the adolescent brain responds to challenges and rewards — an important step toward learning more about how sleep supports healthy emotional development.
We’re proud to share that data collection ran smoothly thanks to the hard work and collaboration of our dedicated research team, the staff at CUBIC, and—most importantly—the enthusiastic involvement of the participants and their families. A huge thank-you to everyone who contributed to making this phase of the project such a success! Our next fMRI data collection sessions will happen in 2027, and we will have the same set of participants as in this year.
Coventry finished baseline data collection with 122 participants across 14 schools, Makhanda completed theirs with 150 participants from 9 schools, and Cape Town reached 152 participants from 11 schools.
The Cape Town site completed data collection in one period, while Coventry and Makhanda split theirs over two periods. It has been incredible to see the level of engagement and support from learners, teachers, families, and our dedicated research teams. Each site brought its own energy and character to the project, and together they’ve created a rich and diverse dataset that will help us better understand teenage sleep across different contexts and communities.
October 2025
Baseline Data Collection Complete at All Sites!
With baseline now behind us, our teams have moved into the scoring and analysis phase—the exciting moment when the data begins to tell its story.
We extend a heartfelt thank you to all our participants, schools, and partners for making this ambitious project possible. Your continued support and enthusiasm have helped shape a truly united SleepCHAMPzzz community, and we can’t wait to share more updates as our work continues.
August 2025
Team Meeting in Makhanda
We reviewed all measures recorded and progress made on the scoring of those measures, as well as developed a plan for analyses moving forward.
We had some training for interviews, with some members of the Coventry team joining us online.
In the midst of this intense year-in-review, we were hosted to a heartwarming and scrumptious South African potjiekos by Prof Davy and his family.
On the last day, we went out as a team to visit the participating schools in Makhanda and share some time together in an outdoors activity.
We’ve just wrapped up one of the biggest phases of the SleepCHAMPzzz project: baseline data collection. This is the stage where we meet each participant for the first time, gather their initial sleep information, get a sense of how they’re doing emotionally, and begin building the picture that we’ll follow as they move through adolescence. With this phase now complete, we’re excited to share how things went across our three sites.
After all sites were nearly done with Year 1 of data collection, it was time for us to gather, reflect, analyse and project for Year 2 of data collection. Our first ever team meeting in 2024 had been hosted by our Coventry team. This year, in 2025, we all converged to Makhanda, Eastern Cape in South Africa in early August (heart of winter this side of the Equator).
May 2024
Team Meeting in Coventry
Our team recently gathered in Coventry in the United Kingdom for our annual meeting, bringing together colleagues from all our partner sites. Over the course of the week, we finalised key study details and made sure everything is in place for the start of data collection.
We also had a few of our LEEs join both online and in person, which really rounded out the team and gave us insights from a wonderfully diverse mix of voices.
Beyond the meeting room, it was great to explore Coventry, connect as a team, and learn from one another as we gear up for baseline data collection. We’re excited for the year ahead and grateful for the energy and collaboration that came out of this gathering.
The agenda was packed:
Our 3 sites shared their experience of the intense data collections which had happened over the past year, the difficulties and complexities, but mainly the profound joys of becoming a team, and the rich interactions with our lived experience experts and the study participants (the true sleepchampzzz 🏆).
Of course, as an assembly of slight geeks, we also needed to have a peak at our measures and asserted that our questionnaires all passed tests of validity in all 3 sites (Coventry, Cape Town, and Makhanda).
February 2025
Baseline Data Collection Ongoing at All Sites
We can now share that all 3 sites have begun Baseline data collection. The Coventry site began in September 2024, with another session starting now, and the Cape Town and Makhanda sites have begun in February 2025.
