Rate My Professor Mona El-Sheikh

Mona El-Sheikh is the Leonard Peterson and Co., Inc. Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Science within Auburn University’s College of Human Sciences. She holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from West Virginia University (1989), an M.A. in Psychology from West Virginia University (1988), and a B.A. in Anthropology, Psychology, and Sociology from The American University in Cairo, Egypt (1984). As a distinguished researcher and graduate faculty member since 1994, El-Sheikh has advanced a biopsychosocial framework for examining child and adolescent development amid familial and socioecological risks, such as marital aggression, child abuse, parental alcoholism, poverty, and ethnic minority status. Her investigations particularly emphasize physiological reactivity and regulation—including sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system activity, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis functioning, and sleep-wake processes—as key mechanisms influencing psychological adjustment, physical health, cognitive performance, and academic achievement.

El-Sheikh’s longitudinal studies, tracking cohorts from childhood into young adulthood, have been supported by over $12 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NICHD and NHLBI) and the National Science Foundation. This work has resulted in over 180 peer-reviewed publications, accumulating more than 15,800 citations with an h-index of 71 as of 2023. Selected key publications include “Sleep and disparities in child and adolescent development” (Child Development Perspectives, 2022), “Discrimination and adjustment in adolescence: The moderating role of sleep” (Sleep, 2022), “Family Functioning and Children’s Sleep” (Child Development Perspectives, 2017), and “Unpacking sleep and mental health disparities across childhood and adolescence: A meta-analytic and systematic review” (Sleep Medicine Reviews, 2026). She has received major honors such as the 2021 Southeastern Conference Faculty Achievement Award, the 2008 Auburn University Faculty Award for Excellence, and election as a Fellow of the American Psychological Association in 2022. Directing the Child Sleep, Health, and Development Lab, her interdisciplinary contributions span psychology, family studies, pediatric sleep medicine, psychophysiology, public health, and health disparities research.