2022 Strumpf Scholar Award Recipients Announced
The Strumpf Scholar Award, provided by the Linda Brodsky Strumpf Liberal Arts Centennial Graduate Endowment, recognizes outstanding achievement and promise in areas of research supported by the Child Study Center. Students who receive the Strumpf Scholar Award show innovation and promise in their own research, often have multiple lines of research, and have begun the process of sharing this work with the child psychology research community via presentations and often publications. Selected graduate students are provided with two years of funding for summer support, as well as additional funds for research-related costs.
We are pleased to announce the 2022 Strumpf Scholars: Tong Chen, a Developmental Psychology graduate student and Christina Hlutkowsky, a Child Clinical Psychology graduate student.
Tong’s research interest involves the intergenerational transmission of internalizing symptoms and the long-term impact internalizing problems could have for developmental outcomes such as alcohol use. Her primary mentor is Dr. Jenae Neiderhiser. Tong graduated from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, with a degree in Psychology. Prior to graduate school, she received extensive research experience working in labs at Tsinghua University, Columbia University, and the Douglas Mental Health University Institute in Montreal, Canada. As a graduate student, she has pursued training both inside and outside of her program. She works with Dr. Neiderhiser in the Gene Environment Interplay Across the Lifespan lab. As a Prevention and Methodology Training (PAMT) pre-doctoral fellow, she works with Drs. Neiderhiser, Jennifer Maggs, and Ashley Linden-Carmichael to examine the association between child and adolescent internalizing problems and adolescent/early adult alcohol use. She also works with Dr. Jennifer Glick in the Sociology Department and she participated in designing a study examining family interactions and mental health outcomes during a strict COVID-19 lockdown in Hubei Province, China. The Strumpf Scholar Award will help Tong devote time to her many research projects and will also provide the opportunity for her to begin a new collaboration with Dr Thalia Eley at King’s College London. Her long-term goal is to secure a tenure-track faculty position in a major research university.
Christina is interested in improving the understanding of the taxonomy and measurement of psychological processes in the service of improved assessment, and therefore treatment, of childhood disorders. Her primary mentor is Dr. Cynthia Huang-Pollock. Christina received her Bachelor of Science summa cum laude in 2015 from the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to graduate school, Christina worked with Dr. Susan Perlman at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where she co-authored seven academic papers, all in top-tier journals. She currently works with Dr. Huang-Pollock in the Child Attention and Learning Lab and Dr. Koraly Pérez-Edgar in the Cognition, Affect, and Temperament Lab. Christina received the Robert and Ruth Faris Child Psychology Enhancement Award in 2019 and was presented with Psi Chi’s Graduate TA of the Year award in 2020. Her master’s thesis was titled: Examining the Predictive Utility of the BRIEF on Performance-Based Executive Function (EF) Tasks. Receiving the Strumpf Scholar Award will allow Christina to expand her analytic expertise by beginning a collaboration with Dr. Sarah Karalunas at Purdue University, an expert in network theory as related to ADHD. Christina looks forward to a research-focused career examining ADHD and anxiety symptomatology and their network structures for the sake of unraveling more nuanced understanding and meaningful assessment of these disorders in children.
Please join us in congratulating Tong and Christina!
