Laura Stroud

Biography

Laura Stroud, PhD is Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior. She serves as Director of the COBRE Center for Stress, Trauma, and Resilience (STAR) and Director and Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine at The Miriam Hospital. She also serves as Founding Director of the Maternal-Infant Studies Laboratory and the Child and Adolescent Stress Laboratories. Dr. Stroud is a dedicated mentor and co-directs the STAR T32, a postdoctoral fellowship program focused on the impact of childhood stress, trauma, and resilience across the lifespan. Dr. Stroud’s research focuses on intergenerational mechanisms of risk for stress, depression, and substance use with the goal of informing interventions and policy to reduce intergenerational transmission. Her work involves a transdisciplinary framework incorporating both biological and behavioral markers of risk and a focus on novel neurobehavioral and stress response paradigms. Her work focuses on two sensitive periods of development: prenatal-infant transition and the adolescent/pubertal transition. Within the perinatal period, Dr. Stroud's work has focused on biobehavioral pathways through which effects of maternal stress, substance use, and depression are transmitted to the fetus and infant. She has also developed a line of research focused on the impact of marijuana use and novel tobacco products (hookah, electronic cigarettes) on pregnant mothers and infants. Within the adolescent period, Dr. Stroud’s work has focused on novel neural and neuroendocrine biomarkers of risk for adolescent depression. Dr. Stroud has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health since 2001, and her work has also been supported by several foundation and research career awards.