After graduating from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, Dr Gompf went to graduate school at Oregon Health & Science University in the lab of Dr Charles Allen where he studied synaptic transmission in the suprachiasmatic nucleus. His first postdoc position was in the lab of Dr Gary Aston-Jones at the University of Pennsylvania where he worked on circadian and anesthetic influences on the locus ceoruleus. Following this, he pursued a second postdoc and first junior faculty position under Drs. Jun Lu and Clifford Saper at Harvard’s Division of Sleep Medicine and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. While there his work centered around both hypothalamic and brainstem regulation of the sleep-wake cycle. Since then, Dr Gompf has worked at UC Davis, Mass Chan Medical School and currently again at UC Davis.

Dr Gompf’s work as a co-investigator with Dr Anaclet involves the circuit mechanisms of brainstem regulation of sleep and thalamic oscillations. Another project he is working on lies at the intersection of sleep and Alzheimer’s disease.