Kayla Chanel Hightower

Kayla Chanel Hightower is a Research Affiliate with the Yale Consumer Health Informatics Lab (CHIL) and a PhD student in Neuropsychology at Howard University. She earned her BS in Psychology and MS in Psychometrics from Morgan State University where her thesis examined how cognitive abilities forecast NBA outcomes.

At CHIL, she contributed as a 2025 Summer Intern to the WellSis project, helping adapt app features to be culturally responsive for Black women. She is also working on the IMHOTEP project, analyzing mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic through social network analysis of Twitter data. Her career goal is to become a sports psychologist, exploring how social factors such as trauma, parental loss, and adversity influence athlete performance, while developing culturally responsive assessments.