Maria Kroupina

Maria Kroupina is an assistant professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Global Pediatrics, Department of Pediatrics, at the University of Minnesota and is affiliated faculty in Institute of Child Development and Center for Neurobehavioral Development.

Her chief interest is building a research-based clinical practice that includes assessment and intervention for children who experienced traumatic stress, including loss of biological parents, orphanage stay, abuse and/or neglect. She was awarded a Zero To Three fellowship to develop this program for internationally adopted children.

Current funded research includes a study on nutritional status of recently arrived internationally adopted children (PI: Michael Georgieff), and collaborative work as a co-investigator regarding recovery from early life stress in children adopted from institutions (PI: Megan Gunnar) and neurobehavioral correlates of early deprivation (PI: Megan Gunnar), postnatal choline supplementation in children with prenatal alcohol exposure (PI: Jeff Wozniak) and acute versus delayed iron status and anemia in cognition (PI: Chandy John).

Kroupina earned her Ph.D. at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota, her master's degree in clinical psychology was awarded by Moscow State University Department of Psychology (Moscow, Russia) and has additional professional training in family systems therapy (Moscow Center for Marriage and Family Therapy) and attachment disturbances (Tulane University).

She also is working to build clinical programs for high-risk orphaned children in Kazakhstan and Russia (see Spoon Foundation) and does education for parent groups such as Haiti In Our Hearts in northern Minnesota.

AWARDS

Fellow, ZERO TO THREE Program, 2009 - 2011

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Maria G. Kroupina, Patricia J. Bauer, Megan R. Gunnar, Dana E. Johnson (2010). Early Adversity - Institutional Care as a Risk for Explicit Memory Development. Adv Child Dev Behav;38:137-59

Miller BS, Kroupina M, Iverson S, Mason P, Narad C, Himes J, Johnson DE, Petryk A. Auxological evaluation and determinants of growth failure at the time of adoption in Eastern European adoptees. J Pediatr Endocrinol Metab 2009 Jan;22(1):31-9.

Fuglestad A, Lehmann A, Kroupina M, Petryk A, Miller BS, Iverson S, Johnson DE, Georgieff M. Iron deficiency in international adoptees from Eastern Europe. J Pediatr 153(2),272-7.