Owaves brings Circadian Health to the American College of Lifestyle Medicine 2025 conference

By Sourabh Gapate, Chief Technology Officer, Owaves

This year I had the opportunity to attend Lifestyle Medicine (LM) 2025, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine’s (ACLM) annual conference, representing Owaves and presenting our second peer-reviewed research publication. It was my first time at an ACLM meeting and our team’s second academic poster presentation (see our first poster presentation at UC San Diego’s Center for Circadian Biology here). It was an experience that was equal parts exciting, humbling, and deeply motivating.

Sharing my first research publication

Our poster, titled “Personalizing Lifestyle Medicine by Recognizing Pillar-Specific Chronotypes,” comes out of my graduate research, done in collaboration with my faculty advisor Dr. Benjamin Smarr, professor of Data Science and Bioengineering at UC San Diego and Dr. Royan Kamyar, our team’s CEO.

At a high level, our work asks a simple question:

What if your “chronotype” isn’t just one thing?

Traditionally, chronotype is described with broad labels like “morning lark” or “night owl.” But when we looked at real-world behavior data, we found something more nuanced. People often keep different timing patterns for different pillars of lifestyle-for example:

• You might be early for sleep,
• but mid-day for exercise,
• and late when it comes to focused work or social connection.

Using large-scale, aggregated and anonymized activity records received with explicit, double opt-in permission from the Owaves community, we explored whether each pillar (Sleep, Eat, Exercise, etc.) has its own chronotype signature and whether those pillar-specific patterns could help personalize lifestyle medicine interventions.

Standing in front of that poster for the first time, seeing the dendrograms, scatter plots, and cluster validation metrics on the board, I felt a real sense of gratitude for my mentors, my team at Owaves, and everyone who contributed to the data and tools that made this possible.

Conversations that brought the science to life

As a first-time poster presenter, I didn’t know what to expect. Over the session, more than 25 attendees stopped by to ask questions, challenge assumptions, and brainstorm next steps.

Some of the recurring themes in our conversations:

• Clinical relevance:
  Physicians and other clinicians were curious how pillar-specific chronotypes could be translated into practical workflows. Could a provider quickly see a patient’s “sleep chronotype” versus “exercise chronotype” and use that to time medication, coaching, or behavioral goals?
• Equity and access:
  Several attendees raised thoughtful questions about how to apply chronotype-based personalization in populations with rigid schedules, shift work, or limited autonomy over their time.
• Digital phenotyping and AI:
  Many were excited by the idea that everyday calendar data could become a non-invasive, privacy-preserving signal for individualizing care especially when combined with wearables and AI-driven insights.
  

I walked away with pages of notes on potential next steps: validating these clusters in clinical cohorts, linking pillar-specific chronotypes to outcomes like sleep quality, mood, and metabolic health, and exploring how they might guide habit-formation strategies inside products like Owaves.

A conference that truly felt interdisciplinary

LM 2025 was big, busy, and wonderfully diverse. Walking through the poster hall and sessions, I met:

• Clinical physicians across specialties
• Lifestyle medicine professionals and health coaches
• Researchers, students, and educators
• Leaders from digital health startups and established companies
• People from adjacent fields including behavioral science, public health, nutrition, technology, and policy
  

That mix is rare. It created a space where a conversation might start with statistical methods and end with how to better counsel a patient next Monday morning.

The expo floor and company booths highlighted how quickly AI and digital tools are being integrated into lifestyle medicine from decision support systems, to remote monitoring platforms. As someone who spends most days thinking about product roadmaps and data pipelines, it was energizing to see how these tools are being used on the front lines of patient care.

Dr. Laurie Santos and the science of happiness

One of the standout sessions for me was a keynote from Dr. Laurie Santos of Yale. She’s widely known for her work on the science of happiness, and her talk resonated with everyone in the room, not just lifestyle medicine practitioners.

She unpacked:

• Common misconceptions about what makes us happy
• The cognitive biases that distort our understanding of well-being
• Practical, research-backed strategies for cultivating happiness in daily life
  

For me, her talk connected directly to what we’re building at Owaves. Happiness isn’t just about doing “healthy” activities, it’s about when, how, and with whom we do them, and how those experiences fit into the rhythms of our lives. In other words: our body clocks and social clocks matter.

Bridging tech and medicine

I don’t come from a traditional medical background. I’m an engineer and product person who happens to be obsessed with how lifestyle shapes health.

At times, standing in a sea of white coats and clinical acronyms, it would be easy to feel out of place. But the opposite happened. Conversations with physicians, nurses, dietitians, and coaches kept landing on the same point:

We need better tools that help people live the healthy lives they want to live without adding friction or complexity.

That’s exactly where technology can help:

• Turning raw data into clear, actionable insights
• Using personalization to nudge behaviors at the right time, not just in the right direction
• Creating engaging, supportive experiences that fit into real-world lives, not idealized schedules
  

Seeing how many clinicians are eager to collaborate with technologists reinforced my belief that the future of lifestyle medicine is deeply digital without ever losing its human core.

What this means for Owaves

Coming back from ACLM, I feel an even stronger sense of responsibility and excitement in my role as CTO.

This experience reaffirmed a few key commitments for me and for Owaves:

1. Ground our products in solid science.
   Our chronotype research isn’t just an academic exercise. It’s a blueprint for how the Owaves Body Clock Calendar and future tools can better match daily plans to each person’s natural rhythms.
2. Design for clinicians and consumers.
   We want Owaves to feel intuitive and delightful for individuals, while also generating insights that clinicians can trust and act on.
3. Keep equity and accessibility at the forefront.
   If digital lifestyle tools only work for people with flexible schedules and high resources, we’ve missed the mark. The feedback I received at LM 2025 will directly inform how we shape features with diverse users in mind.
4. Build for healthier, happier lives, not just better metrics.
   The ultimate goal is not a prettier calendar; it’s more energy, better mood, deeper connection, and a sense of agency over one’s time and health.
   

Looking ahead

Presenting this poster at LM 2025 was a milestone for me personally, for our research collaboration with UC San Diego, and for Owaves as a company committed to advancing lifestyle medicine.

From the hallway conversations in front of the poster boards to the packed keynotes and the moments of shared excitement about what’s possible with AI and digital health, I left the conference with a clear takeaway:

We’re still early in understanding how daily rhythms shape health but the community is ready, and the tools are finally catching up.

I’m grateful to ACLM for hosting such a vibrant gathering, to my co-authors and mentors for their guidance, and to every attendee who stopped by to question, challenge, and encourage this work.

And I’m more motivated than ever to keep building technology that helps people align their body clocks, their values, and their lifestyles so that “healthy” feels not just achievable, but genuinely joyful.

Scroll through the photos below for a glimpse into the conference, the poster session, and some of the conversations that made LM 2025 such a memorable experience.