Keith Hengen, Assistant Professor of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis, is a systems and computational neuroscientist interested in applying theory-guided approaches to understanding the principles of reliable biological computation. This work centers on the role of sleep in restoring an optimal computational regime, and reconsiders neurodegenerative disease as a failure of computationally essential set-points in large networks. Work in the Hengen Lab is heavily interdisciplinary, and comprises collaborations that span theoretical physics, computer science, and neurology. Hengen was selected as a Next Generation Leader by the Allen Brain Institute and has received awards from the BrightFocus Foundation and the Sleep Research Society.