Liisa A. Lehtonen MD, PhD

Dr Liisa Lehtonen is the Head of the Division of Neonatology in Turku University Hospital and Professor in Pediatrics in Turku University, Finland. She has done research focusing on the ways to optimize the long term developmental outcome of preterm infants integrating research on fetal environment, brain imaging, infant behaviour and early parent-infant interaction. Another line of her research focuses on organizational aspects, especially on the regionalization of the births of very preterm infants, to improve the framework of neonatal care.

At the beginning of her career in pediatrics, she was interested in colicky infants (she defended her doctoral thesis titled Infantile colic in 1994) leading her to work with Dr Ronald G. Barr in McGill University in Montreal. After research training in McGill University, she continued in a 3-year fellowship program in neonatology in Rainbow Babies' and Children's Hospital at Case Western Reserve University. Under mentorship by Dr Richard Martin and Dr Martha Miller, she integrated her expertise on infant behaviour in the research on very preterm infants.