Eszter Vaszkunné Kótyuk is a psychologist and an associate professor with habilitation at the Institute of Psychology of ELTE Faculty of Pedagogy and Psychology (ELTE PPK). She completed her studies at ELTE PPK and received her doctoral degree at the ELTE Doctoral School of Psychology in 2014. In 2014, she received a one-year fellowship at the Washington University in St. Louis and carried out research at the Cognitive Department led by Professor David Balota.
Her research interests include substance-related and behavioural addictions and their underlying psychological mechanisms. She specializes in investigating the empirical bacground of the Reward Deficiency Syndrome model, emphasizing shared molecular and psychological factors in the background of multiple addictions. In 2024, she won the Academic Youth Award of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2021, she was selected as the “Promising Researcher” of ELTE. In 2024, she received a grant from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences for researchers raising young children, and between 2021 and 2025, she was honoured with the Bolyai János Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. From 2018 to 2023, she was a research associate of the LENDÜLET Adaptation Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and a co-researcher in 3 OTKA projects. Between 2015 and 2018, she received funding in the framework of the Postdoctoral Research Programme of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Eszter is a supervisor at the Doctoral School of Psychology at ELTE PPK. As a therapist, she works with both couples and families, and she is also a hypnotherapist in training. She is married with two children.
