Rafael Pelayo, MD was born in New York City and lived for extended periods in Puerto Rico. He received a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Puerto Rico, and his M.D. from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1988. During this time he completed an honors thesis on adolescent sleep disorders which was awarded a prize in neurology research. Dr. Pelayo interned in Pediatrics at Columbia Presbyterian Babies & Children’s Hospital. After an additional year of Pediatrics training at Montefiore Medical Center, he completed a fellowship in child neurology, also at Montefiore. He continued to be involved in their sleep disorders clinic, mentored by Dr. Michael Thorpy.
In 1993 he began a sleep medicine fellowship at Stanford University and subsequently requested to join the clinical staff at the Stanford Sleep Disorders clinic. He has remained there ever since and is currently an associate professor at the Sleep Medicine Center with an appointment through the department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science.
Dr. Pelayo’s clinical focus has been the treatment of sleep disorders in children and adults. He has lectured nationally and internationally and has appeared frequently in television, radio and print. He has served as chair of the Sleep Disorders Research Advisory Board of the National Center for Sleep Disorders Research at the National Heart Lung Blood Institute at the NIH. He has also chaired the pediatric special interest section of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Dr. Pelayo currently teaches the Stanford Sleep and Dreams undergraduate course alongside Dr. William Dement. Together, they co-authored the course textbook which was published 2013.