Kaitlyn Ventre (’26)

Kaitlyn Ventre (she/her) is a senior Penn State student majoring in Psychology, with a business option. Her research interests focus on understanding how health behaviors, such as physical activity and eating patterns, interact with early emotional and environmental risk to influence mental health trajectories across development.

As an undergraduate student, Kaitlyn has worked in Dr. Newman’s Laboratory for Anxiety and Depression Research and in Dr. Burkhouse’s Families, Affective Neuroscience, and Mood Disorders (FAM) Lab. As an undergraduate research coordinator in the FAM Lab, Kaitlyn recruits and trains undergraduate research assistants in clinical interviewing. She also serves as the undergraduate project lead on a study examining emotional expression and psychophysiological responses during social interactions. Her other lab responsibilities include assisting with electroencephalogram (EEG) study visits, interacting directly with child participants and families, administering study measures, monitoring EEG data collection, and contributing to recruitment and psychoeducational materials. Kaitlyn has presented four first-authored posters, both nationally and internationally, and received the Gerald A. Hauser Award for best overall poster at the 2026 Penn State Undergraduate Exhibition.

Outside of research, Kaitlyn works as a peer adviser in the College of the Liberal Arts and a course development assistant in the College of Information Sciences and Technology. She served as a teaching assistant for a developmental psychology course and as Research Chair of Penn State’s Psi Chi chapter. Recently, she began assisting on a collaborative project examining prompt engineering and generative AI in higher education where she conducts literature reviews, collects and organizes research data, develops coding frameworks for qualitative analyses, and contributes to manuscript preparation. Kaitlyn enjoys fitness, traveling, and spending time with friends and family.

Following graduation, Kaitlyn will be working as a postbaccalaureate research assistant in the FAM Lab, where she hopes to advance her research skills as she prepares to apply to doctoral programs in clinical psychology. Ultimately, Kaitlyn hopes to contribute to research that informs prevention and intervention efforts that promote both psychological and physical health.

The CSC wishes Kaitlyn all the best in her future academic pursuits!