Dr. Meng-Chuan Lai is Clinician Scientist and O’Brien Scholar in the Child and Youth Mental Health Collaborative at CAMH, The Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto. He is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. He is also honorary Director of Gender Research in Autism at the Autism Research Centre of the University of Cambridge (UK), and Adjunct Attending Psychiatrist and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the National Taiwan University.
Areas of Research
Dr. Lai’s vision is to bridge and integrate multi-level biological-cognitive-psychological-social research and clinical services. His clinical interests are in the risk and resilience processes across the lifespan in individuals with atypical social, cognitive and affective development (such as the autism spectrum, ADHD, anxiety and mood disorders) and children and youth with medical illness, as well as how sex/gender modulates these processes. His current research investigates cognitive and neuro/biological bases of autism and associated neurodevelopmental conditions, and their emerging comorbidities (such as depression, anxiety and medical illness) across the lifespan. A particular focus is on females with autism and the complex relationships between autism and sexual differentiation, gender socialization and sex/gender differences. Dr. Lai’s work also expands to social cognition, mind-brain-body interactions, psychiatric nosology (especially in clarifying the vast heterogeneity in psychiatric conditions) and cross-discipline integration.
Publications
View Dr. Lai’s publications on PubMed and Google Scholar.