Kaela Van Til, the lead research technician for the Prechter bipolar research team, recently accepted an offer of admission from Purdue University’s Clinical Psychology Ph.D. Program. This will start in August 2019.
During her two years with the Prechter Program, Kaela has worked on several studies, including the Longitudinal Study of Bipolar Disorder, Modeling Mood Course to Detect Markers of Effective Adaptive Interventions, and An Observational Longitudinal Study in Offspring of Parents with Bipolar Disorder. She has been responsible for recruitment of participants and daily coordination, as well as acting in an intermediate role managing the workflow of the research lab and delegating tasks to research associates and students. Kaela has also been able to assist in the writing of a manuscript and conduct a poster presentation.
Kaela’s research focus in graduate school will be on personality, specifically, the assessment of psychopathy and narcissistic personality disorder. She is interested in the role of antagonism and aggression, as well as examining how these disorders manifest in both productive and maladaptive ways across the lifetime.
Kaela would like to thank her fellow research staff members and the researchers for their support, and the participants for their willingness to be our research partners. Without them, this work could not be done.