Mariska Kret and Karlijn van Heijst awarded grants to continue research with great apes

Mariska Kret, in collaboration with Jenna Yeisley, will receive an Impact Explorer Grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This funding builds on Mariskas previous NWO Vidi grant “Trust and distrust through emotional mimicry. Implications for autism spectrum disorder and social anxiety disorder” and provides the opportunity to explore the potential societal impacts of unexpected discoveries found during this research. The Impact Explorer Grant will help fund a year long technology forward welfare initiative in chimpanzees.

Additionally, PhD candidate Karlijn van Heijst, was awarded Leiden University Una Europa Seed Funding to continue her research on emotional attention bias in orangutans. Leiden University Una Europa Seed Funding provides financial assistance for projects which aid in building international ties within the Una Europa Alliance. This will allow Karlijn to visit her co-promotor, Raphaela Heesen, and Basel Zoo as part of her Mercator Sapiens PhD project, “The Evolutionary Drivers of Our Behavior”, which explores the role of emotional expressions in cooperation among great apes.

Congrats to both!

Photo credit – Joke Kok. Pictured left: Amersfoort Zoo chimpanzee Willy. Pictured right: Ouwehands Zoo orangutan Minggu.