From science, for the people: The team to solve sleep problems
About a quarter of people in Western countries suffers from poor to very poor sleep quality - with many negative consequences. To change this, a team of researchers led by Prof. Manuel Schabus have developed a virtual sleep lab for home that also offers sleep training.
Founders & Core Team
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Manuel Schabus
CSO
Head of the Sleep, Cognition and Consciousness Research Laboratory at the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience Salzburg & psychotherapist & psychologist
Responsibility in Management Team: Scientific master plan | translating scientific findings into applied practice | AI concept for classification of sleep staged & AI based, individualized sleep training
Dr. Thomas Winkler
CEO
15 years of experience in leading and managing international expert teams; Managing Director of international consulting company; extensive organizational development experience; educational & research background in Cognitive Neuroscience
Responsibility in Management Team:
Link between business & science | Business Model Planning | Customer Oriented Product Development | Online Performance Marketing | Relation to investors
Michael Rosenzweig-Steiner
CTO
10 years of experience in managing one of the major APP development companies in Austria, allaboutapps
Responsibility in Management Team: Business Model Planning | Customer Oriented APP Development | Online Performance Marketing | Relation to investors
Theresa Hauser MSc
Psychologist & Psychotherapist in training
Core-Responsibility as a research associate: Development of content for individualized sleep training based on evidence-based therapeutic approaches and translation into the digital world.
Competence partners
Through the IP exploitation agreement between PLUS and Nukkuaa GmbH, the economic exploitation of scientific know-how is on a legally sound and economically fair footing.
Paris Lodron University of Salzburg (PLUS)
Polar is an established supplier of high quality yet affordable sensors. To ensure smooth communication between the sensors and the APP (software updates) as well as to adapt the handling of the sensors to customer needs (local storage of data on the sensors), we work together with Polar as a competence partner.
Polar
It is of high scientific interest to further accompany and research the classification of sleep phases based on AI algorithms, the effectiveness of the digital therapy as well as its individuation also in a scientific framework. The laboratory acts as a cooperation partner for the science-based evaluation and further development of the sleep² product offer.
LAB for Sleep & Consciousness Research
As an expert partner dotsandlines was already supporting sleep² with concept-development, user experience design, screen design, graphic design, corporate identity & branding input. Further development in those aspects will be one of the key success factors.
dotsandlines
Brand & UI/ UX
The Lab for Intelligent Data Analytics Salzburg (IDA Lab) funded by Land Salzburg (WISS 2025) serves as central facility for basic and applied research, as well as for knowledge and technology transfer in Data Science, Machine Learning and Statistics & Prof. Borgelt and his team are consulting and actively supporting the further development of AI algorithms to classify sleep stages in sleep².
Intelligent Data Analytics LAB
As the Dean of the newly founded faculty, Arne is also guiding the department of “Artificial Intelligence and Human Interfaces”. Arne is supporting the development of sleep² in his role as senior advisor.
O.Univ.-Prof. Dr. Arne Bathke
Dean of the Faculty of Digital and Analytics Sciences, University of Salzburg
The focus and performance promise of the RB Athlete Performance Center is performance enhancement for selected top athletes. This also includes the optimal utilization of regenerative processes such as healthy sleep. In coordination with the APC, the APP offer can be expanded to include an additional target group.
Red Bull Athlete Performance Center
Performance
The long-standing president of the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber, Christoph Leitl, supports the development of sleep² as a business angel and strategic advisor. His network to investors, companies as well as private and public health insurances plays an important role for the further development of the company.
Dr. Christoph Leitl
Business Angel
Christine is a sleep researcher at the University of Basel and a psychologist in the sleep outpatient clinic of the University Psychiatric Clinics Basel. Already during her PhD, which she obtained at the University of Salzburg in 2016, she discovered the fascination of human sleep for herself. In her current research projects, she is particularly interested in the importance of natural daylight and artificial light for sleep. She is also an active and well-known science communicator on sleep-related topics (e.g. Deutschlandfunk Nova, ORF, SRF).
Dr. Christine Blume
Scientific Advisor