Following Up on TL1 Postdoctoral Scholar Kara Christensen Pacella, Ph.D.
By Kelly Hale, Marketing & Communications Specialist
Mar 11, 2025
“I’m grateful to Frontiers for the opportunity to take part in the TL1 program,” she said. “It allowed me to get support from mentors, who wanted to see us do our best and succeed.”
Formerly at the University of Kansas; currently Assistant Professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas (UNLV)
Kara Christensen Pacella, Ph.D., had a different TL1 experience than she expected as she applied to the program in 2019 and then the pandemic hit, and she spent her two years in the program interacting with other scholars and the program virtually.
“The pandemic definitely made me change, and well I think all of us, how I do research,” Christensen Pacella said. “It really helped with accessibility for participants. Instead of having to take time out of their day to drive to a location, find a parking space, meet, and then leave, the virtual option took some of the stress of having to physically go somewhere.”
And because of that, Christensen Pacella’s TL1 project was all virtual making it easier for participants but also allowed for additional collaboration, focusing on the Team Science aspect of research.
“The collaborations were really helpful and continue to be helpful as I work on different studies,” said Christensen Pacella, whose research focuses on disordered eating.
For her TL1 project, she focused on how participants were impacted by seeing photos on Instagram, potentially leading to disordered eating. Over a week period, participants completed six surveys a day reporting their exposure to eating disorder-relevant images on Instagram, their emotional responses to these images, and their engagement in disordered eating behaviors.
“We saw there was an association between looking at these photos and engaging in disordered eating behaviors over the next two hours,” she said. “But we wanted to understand the how and why of this as well. One possibility we found is that people experience heightened negative emotions after viewing these images, which makes them more likely to engage in harmful eating behaviors”
During her time in the TL1 program, Christensen Pacella appreciated the opportunity not just for funding but being able to build her research profile, the training components of the program and developing her research skills.
“I’m grateful to Frontiers for the opportunity to take part in the TL1 program,” she said. “It allowed me to get support from mentors, who wanted to see us do our best and succeed.”
The main outcomes paper from her TL1 study can be found here.
Kelly Hale
Marketing & Communications Specialist
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