Dr. Mai Uchida is a dedicated pediatric psychiatrist, a committed neuroscience researcher and an internationally acclaimed advocate for mental health, scientific literacy, and gender equality.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Uchida made significant impact as a scientific communicator addressing the strong vaccine hesitancy in Japan. She was awarded the 2022 Japanese Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare Award for the health impact that she was able to make through her advocacy as part of CoV-Navi, a non-profit aimed to disseminate scientifically accurate information about COVID vaccines to the public. Discussing her own experience of receiving the mRNA vaccine during pregnancy, she particularly led the efforts in increasing vaccine acceptance among pregnant and lactating people, and was integrally involved in the federal vaccine rollout as well as media communication. Her community outreach was a large part of how Japan achieved one of the highest vaccination rates among the international society.

In her advocacy for mental health, she shares her experiences as a parent in discussing issues such as racism, gender inequality and emotional regulation. She has articulated her thoughts in a number of international media, including the International Herald Tribune, the Boston Globe, NHK, ABC.com, TBS, WHDH and Buzzfeed. Particularly, her articles that voiced the challenges of being a Japanese female physician in America as well as her thoughts on the psychological experiences of Olympian athletes have received international acclaim. 

Her research career has focused on the clinical and neural biomarkers of unipolar depression, bipolar disorder and ADHD in children. In collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she has published on the functional and structural MRI based biomarkers of the risk for major depression and ADHD, and various clinical studies examining the longitudinal course of disorder development. She is a K23 Awardee from the National Institute of Mental Health. Other research awards she has received include Dupont Warren Fellowship, Livingston Award and Milton Award from Harvard Medical School, Elaine Schlosser Lewis Award from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, The Best Paper Award from the Journal of Attention Disorder and the Louis V Gertsner Scholar Award.

She is also a clinician to both children and adults. As a mother of 3 children herself, her passion to help families is not only professional, but deeply personal.