With a passion for animal cognition and behavior, I pursued a bachelor’s degree in psychology with a focus on animals at The College of Wooster, USA, a research-intensive institution. My thesis explored inequity aversion in dogs, a topic I later expanded on during a research internship at the Domestication Lab in Vienna. Recently, I completed my master’s degree in Behavioral Ecology at Utrecht University, where I investigated inequity aversion in bonobos and conducted a second project on pupil mimicry across species (humans, dogs, bonobos) at the CoPAN lab.
My work on pupil mimicry sparked a deep interest in emotions and how we can use technology such as eye trackers and touch screens to explore them. Currently, as a research assistant at the CoPAN lab, I engage in comparative research with apes, focusing on emotion perception, while preparing to pursue a PhD.