I’m a Ph.D. student in Anthropology at Emory University working with Dr. Marcela Benítez. I graduated in 2023 from the University of Rochester with a B.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and a B.A. in Psychology. My previous research includes characterizing the manipulation of behavior in a social wasp by an endoparasite and investigating social cognition and attention in marmoset monkeys. 

I am interested in better understanding the cognition of capuchin monkeys in the wild. I seek to use machine vision (artificial intelligence) and novel experimental paradigms to probe at the following questions: 1) How stable are cognitive abilities in the wild, and how do they develop? 2) Is there a relationship between different domains of cognition and social positioning (e.g. rank)? 3) Do capuchins understand their groupmates’ cognitive abilities when choosing who to learn socially from? By melding field observation and experiments with more controlled lab paradigms, I aim to better characterize variation in cognition and behavior, as well as the sources of said variation.