Kael Ragnini ’19

Overview

Graduate Student, Harvard University
Cambridge, MA

• BA, Neuroscience and Behavior, Vassar College
• Pending Doctorate, Clinical Psychology, Harvard University

Kael Ragnini (she/her) is a second-year PhD student in clinical psychology at Harvard University. She majored in neuroscience and behavior at Vassar. After graduation, she worked for three years as a research assistant in a behavioral neuroscience lab at the University of Pennsylvania, studying roles for peripheral metabolic factors such as GLP-1 in substance use disorders. She then worked for two years as a clinical research assistant at McLean Hospital, where her work focused on stress, anxiety, and opioid use disorder. She began her graduate work in clinical psychology at Harvard in the fall of 2024, advised by Dr. Jill Hooley. Her research focuses on mental health literacy and understanding the process of self-diagnosis using self-report surveys and lab tasks. She is also training as a student clinician at the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Institute at McLean Hospital, delivering exposure and response therapy to patients receiving residential treatment for OCD.

Advice to Students:

A rejection is nothing more than a redirection! When you get a rejection letter from a job, internship, or school, don’t be afraid to ask the advisor or individual you applied to work with if they have any advice for strengthening your CV or if they have any colleagues in similar fields who are hiring for comparable positions. Especially in academia, faculty members and research investigators have a network of collaborators doing related research and are usually happy to connect you to any additional resources they know of. Even if you don’t end up getting that particular position, you can still network and make a good impression!