I am PhD candidate in the Cognitive Sciences program at Georgia State University working with Dr. Sarah Brosnan. Broadly, my interests lie within social cognition and behavioral economics, both within and outside the Primate Order. Within social cognition, I am particularly interested in how individual discrimination and social knowledge emerge from the foundations of object recognition and social perception. Additionally, I am interested in the perceptual, social and cognitive mechanisms underlying economic decision-making and cooperation in nonhuman primates. I approach these topics from a comparative and evolutionary perspective and have investigated such behavior in a number of primate species including chimpanzees, orangutans, capuchin and squirrel monkeys housed at various facilities including the Language Research Center, the Michael E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research of the UT/MD Anderson Cancer Center and Zoo Atlanta.

Previously, I have worked with Dr. Marilyn Norconk in researching the interaction of saki monkeys (P. pithecia and C. satanas) with seed demography and the impact on pre and post-dispersal seed predation in Suriname. In addition, I have investigated the physiological and psychological sources of stress in adult female blue monkeys (Cercopithecus mitis) in Kenya, focusing on food availability and intraspecific competition with Dr. Steffen Foerster.