Grace Kong, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, has been chosen to be Co-Chair of the Program Committee of Society of Research on Nicotine & Tobacco (SRNT). Her term is for three years.
According to its website, SRNT is the only professional association exclusively dedicated to the support of researchers, academics, treatment professionals, government employees, and others who work across disciplines in the field of nicotine and tobacco research.
As a scientific society, SRNT’s mission is “to stimulate the generation and dissemination of new knowledge concerning nicotine in all its manifestations.” The organization holds an annual scientific conference where researchers at every career stage present their latest findings. It also produces a scientific journal, Nicotine & Tobacco Research, published by Oxford University Press.
At Yale, Kong is a member of the Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science (TCORS). She and other researchers investigate the influence of flavors, sweeteners, and other constituents on the appeal and addictive potential of traditional tobacco products and newer products like e-cigarettes.
Kong’s research interests include understanding substance use health disparities among youth, the use of social media for surveillance of tobacco use behaviors and tobacco marketing, and development of innovative adolescent tobacco cessation interventions for youth.
In 2020 she was awarded a federally funded grant to examine youth-accessible information on YouTube regarding how e-cigarettes are modified and “hacked.”