INRICH Member Profile Card
Mai Thanh Tu
Université de Montréal
Mai Thanh Tu completed her doctoral studies in neurosiences at McGill University (Montreal, Canada) under the supervision of Dr. Sonia Lupien and Dr. Claire-Dominique Walker. After spending 18 months at The University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada) as a postdoctoral research fellow in Pediatrics, she came back to Montreal to pursue her postdoctoral training at the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at Universite de Montreal, with Dr. Louise Seguin and Dr. Mark Daniel. Mai Thanh Tu is funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the NARSAD foundation.
Type of member: Past Member
Telephone: 514 890-8000 ext. 15901
Email Address: mai.thanh.tu@umontreal.ca
Mailing Address: 3875 St-Urbain, office 3-02, Montreal, Canada H2W 1V1
Collaborative Projects
Quebec Longitudinal Study on Child Development - Health outcomes with Louise Seguin and Lise Gauvin.
Current research interests
Mai Thanh Tu examined the influences of breastfeeding and low income on biological stress pathways in mothers of healthy infants during her doctoral studies. Then, she investigated stress regulation in preterm infants during painful procedures such as vaccination. Mai is now working on the contribution of contextual factors such as social and physical characteristics of residential neighborhood, living in poverty conditions and caring for a sick child on maternal mental health using questionnaires, geographic informatics system and biomarkers of stress and allostatic load (cortisol and glycated hemoglobin).
Research priorities
Pathways and mechanisms: Cumulative and additive social risk exposures (e.g. transient v. persistent poverty). Stress and allostatic load. Social into the biological and epigenetic. | Methodological issues: Methods for examining change over time including longitudinal effects studies. Multi-level studies - Society, Family & Individual.
Selected publications
Tu, M. T., Daniel, M., & Séguin, L. (2009). Child Health, Poverty, Neighborhood Characteristics and Trajectories of Maternal Depression. Poster presented at the 30th Annual Meeting of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, April 22nd-25th, 2009, Montréal, Canada. Meritorious Student Award.
Tu, M. T., Grunau, R. E., Petrie-Thomas, J., Haley, D. W., Weinberg, J., & Whitfield, M. F. (2007). Maternal stress and behavior modulate relationships between neonatal stress, attention, and basal cortisol at 8 months in preterm infants. Developmental Psychobiology, 49(2), 150-164. doi:10.1002/dev.20204
profile updated: 04/18/2019