After obtaining my bachelors degree in Biomedical Sciences from Marist University (2019), I decided to explore my lifelong interest in animal behaviour and began working as a lab assistant at Fordham University studying the neurobiological underpinnings of motivation in mice. Following that, I moved to The Netherlands to obtain my masters degree in Animal Behaviour at Wageningen University (2023). I am especially interested in the field of animal welfare and emotion. I focused both my masters projects on this topic and performed a welfare based assessment on brown bears at Ouwehands Dierenpark, as well as a study of anticipatory behaviour as a welfare indicator in domestic cats. After working as a hatchery researcher post-graduation, I began volunteering with the CoPAN lab where I helped with emotion based studies in cats and eye-tracking experiments in chimpanzees and orangutans. I am now lucky enough to work here as a part time research assistant where I hope to help advance the ground breaking research of my peers in the field of animal cognition and emotion.