Professional Bio

Tong Chen is a fourth-year graduate student in developmental psychology working with Dr. Jenae Neiderhiser. She received her B.S. in Psychology from Tsinghua University, China, in 2018 and her M.S. in Developmental Psychology from Penn State in 2020. She is interested in studying the mechanisms of the intergenerational transmission of internalizing problems using genetically informed designs, and how pubertal development interacts with heritable and environmental risks to influence internalizing problems in adolescents. Her research also focuses on how internalizing problems during adolescence could be related to substance use in young adults. She is currently working with Drs. Jenae Neiderhiser, Jennifer Maggs, and Ashley Linden-Carmichael through the Prevention and Methodology Training (PAMT) program to examine the internalizing pathway to substance use.