Kaynaat Abrar's research career began with an email advertising the Department of Psychology's Budding Scholars Program in her first year, which paired her with Professor Konstantine Zakzanis. She later won the Budding Scholar Research Extension Award and an Honourable Mention in the 2025 UTSC Undergraduate Research and Creative Prize for a thesis on symptoms that look like a concussion but have different underlying causes.
She worked in the TEMPO Lab and in Mark Schmuckler's Laboratory for Infant Studies, where a project found that children aged three to five adjust their walking pace to a changing metronome beat. She has also worked with nursing professor Mariana Bueno on barriers and facilitators in the NICU.
Abrar founded the Child and Youth Mental Health Initiative at UTSC in second year, volunteers with Kids Help Phone, and has won a University of Toronto Excellence Award, DHS Community Engagement and Leadership Awards, and a CAMH Undergraduate Award for a 12-week placement. She will be among the first students in the Myron and Berna Garron Health Sciences Complex, returning this fall as a clinical psychology PhD student — the first in her family to pursue one. That first email, she says, "built basically everything I've done since."
Reported from UTSC grad turns curiosity into a clinical psychology career, by Alexa Battler (U of T Alumni News, August 11, 2026).
More from the original reporting: alumni.utoronto.ca/news/utsc-grad-turns-curiosity-clinical-psychology-career