Education

  • PhD, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, 2002, Clinical Psychology
  • MA, Clinical Psychology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, 1999, Clinical Psychology
  • BS, Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, 1996, Psychology

Research Interests

Dr. Stewart is the Dudley & Beverly Coates Endowed Professor at Pennington Biomedical Research Center (PBRC) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and a licensed Clinical Psychologist. She directs the Behavior Technology Laboratory: Health, Performance & Resilience, where her work centers on translational science—developing health behavior tools that bring lab-based research into real-world impact.

Dr. Stewart is a pioneer in the development and testing of digital and community participatory programs to increase access to prevention and treatment. With over $24 million in research funding to date, Dr. Stewart leads a multidisciplinary team of psychologists, dietitians, exercise physiologists, programmers, statisticians, elite athletes, and soldiers in conducting large-scale, multi-site studies involving novel intervention programs and technologies for behavior change in clinical populations, and high-performance populations, namely, NCAA female athletes and U.S. Army Soldiers. Dr. Stewart has developed scalable technology-based tools, i.e. Smartphone apps, that have been globally used in health systems, athletic programs, and military settings. She served on the U.S. Army Surgeon General’s task force for the Performance Triad Initiative (nutrition, fitness, sleep) and has led DOD-funded projects for over two decades to build and test health and resilience programs for active-duty soldiers and military families. Dr. Stewart is co-Chair for the Center of Military Performance and Resilience at PBRC.

Dr. Stewart has worked with athletes since 2002 and was the recipient of a NIMH (R01) multi-site grant in 2012 to investigate the efficacy of the Female Athlete Body Project (FAB). As a result of this longstanding work, she was awarded funding for two projects (collaborations with Harvard and Stanford) from the Wu Tsai Alliance for Human Performance focused on optimizing mental and physical resilience in female athletes and a third project piloting work on sport transition.  Dr. Stewart also chairs the Athlete Research Board (ARB) which has oversight of research with student athletes at LSU. Dr. Stewart is an investigator in the Institute of Health and Performance of Champions, a recently established research institute at LSU, dedicated to sports medicine and performance science. As part of this collaborative effort, she is an investigator on numerous collaborative projects investigating issues such as psychological resilience, traumatic brain injury, female reproductive health, and cognitive functioning in college and elite athletes.

In her clinical capacity, Dr. Stewart serves as a consultant to LSU Athletics Department for the purposes of prevention and treatment in the context of mental health and performance. She also established PBRC’s  first community-facing behavioral health clinic, delivering accessible, evidence-based treatment for eating disorders, obesity, and diabetes to community members. In both domains, Dr. Stewart treats patients and supervises a team of therapists to deliver treatment.

Dr. Stewart has been recognized for awards including the Louisiana Legislative Women’s Caucus Women of Excellence Award for Health & Medicine, the Patriotic Employer Award, the Esprit de Femme award, and Influential Woman in Business award. Dr. Stewart engages in national and local service including invited speaking engagements, academic journal editorial boards, the National Bureau for Recovery Services for eating disorders and athletes, among many other advisory boards, including medical and business development.

Her TEDx talk, “The Body Revolution We Need: Function Over Form,” showcases her commitment to reframing cultural narratives around appearance and advancing long-term health and resilience.

Behavior Technology Laboratory: Health, Performance & Resilience

Selected Publications

  1. Stewart, T.M., Beyl, R., Pollard, T., Wesley, N., Kilpela, L.S., & Becker, C.B. (2017) The Female Athlete Body (FAB) Study: Rationale, Design, and Baseline Characteristics. Contemporary Clinical Trials, 60, 63-71.

  2. Stewart, T.M. (2018). Why Thinking We Are Fat Won’t Help Us Improve Our Health: Finding the Middle Ground. A Commentary in Obesity, 26(7): 1115-1116, doi.org/10.1002/oby.22241.

  3. Chapa, D.A.N., Hagan, K.T., Perko, V.L., Sorokina, D.A., Alasmar, A., Becker, C.B., Thompson, R.A., Sherman, R.T., Farrell, J.G., Stewart, T.M. (2018). Development of the Athletes Relationships with Training Scale. International Journal of Eating Disorders. DOI: 10.1002/eat.22960

  4. Stewart, T.M., Pollard, T., Hildebrandt, T., Kilpela, L.S., & Becker, C.B. (2019). The Female Athlete Body Project (FAB) Study: 18-Month Outcomes in Eating Disorder Symptoms and Risk Factors. International Journal of Eating Disorders.

  5. Stewart, T.M., Martin, C.K., & Williamson, D.A. (2022). The Complicated Relationship between Dieting, Dietary Restraint, Caloric Restriction, and Eating Disorders: Is a Shift in Public Health Messaging Warranted? International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(1), 491.

  6. Stewart, T.M., Wesley, N.Y., Hazzard, V.M., Varzeas, K., Rowan, M., & Becker, C.B. (2025). Resilience and mental health in female athletes: Identification of associations needed for future longitudinal research. Exercise Sport & Movement, 3(2), e00042.