Laura A. Wortinger Bakke
Associate Professor
Bakgrunn
Education
2017 University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway Degree of Philosophiae Doctor in Medicine, Clinical Neuroscience
2012 University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway Master of Philosophy in Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience
1999 Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Newark, NJ - Bachelor of Arts in Psychology
Research appointments
2025- Associate Professor, Oslo New University College
2023- Senior Researcher, Diakonhjemmet Hospital
2020-2023 Researcher, Diakonhjemmet Hospital & The Norwegian Centre for Mental Disorders Research (NORMENT), University of Oslo
2022-2023 Visiting Researcher, Lieber Institute for Brain Development, Johns Hopkins University
2017-2020 Postdoctoral researcher, Diakonhjemmet Hospital & NORMENT, University of Oslo
2014-2017 PhD research fellow, Department of Paediatrics and Adolescent Health, Akershus University Hospital
Jobber med
Field of study
Child and adolescent psychology
Work focus
Adolescent psychosis, obstetric complications, brain and language development, MRI, genetics
Forskning
Laura Wortinger is an associate professor and researcher at Oslo New University College investigating obstetric complications and their impact on mental health. She is also affiliated with the Division of mental health and substance abuse, Adult psychiatry department Vinderen, at Diakonhjemmet Hospital. Her longstanding research interest is in the pre- and perinatal environment and mental health with the goal of identifying early risk and protective factors for later mental illness, particularly psychosis.
Dr. Wortinger was recently awarded over 8-million NOK in Open Project Support from the South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority to lead investigations into placenta biology and mental health in a study coined PlacMENT. Her study will be the first large-scale study to assess placental genomics and transcriptomics and in utero environmental changes on long-term mental health outcome for both child and mother. She applies cutting-edge research methods to largescale databases such as the Norwegian population-based pregnancy cohort of over 90,000 pregnancies, the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study (MoBa), and the deeply phenotyped Thematically Organized Psychosis Study for Youth (Youth-TOP) cohort of adolescents with early-onset psychosis (EOP). Her ambition is to identify placental biomarkers and mechanisms of risk that can predict females who are at risk of having a complicated pregnancy, where both mother and child can be the target of pre- and postnatal strategies of prevention. Studying pregnancy is not only crucial for the health of the mother and offspring during and after pregnancy, but also for society, as improved knowledge will lead to better treatment that will benefit multiple generations to come.