Mia Mclean

Awarded a PhD in Psychology from The University of Queensland, Australia, Mia McLean is a postdoctoral researcher supervised by Professor Ruth Grunau at the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute, University of British Columbia.

Dr. McLean’s research examines how exposure to neonatal procedural pain-related stress during hospitalization in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit impacts multiple biological systems (brain, physiological stress) to shape trajectories of anxiety/depressive symptom development in children born very preterm (24 – 32 weeks gestation) using a longitudinal statistical modelling approach. A key aim of her work is to understand how parenting factors may act as protective factors in this at-risk population to directly impact clinic and community.

To-date, Mia has been awarded highly-competitive funding to undertake her research including a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Fellowship (2020) and Australian Government Postgraduate Research Training Scholarship funding (2015). She has also received many travel awards, presenting her work at national and international conferences including the International Society of Developmental Psychobiology.