2025
February
- Lauren visited The University of Texas at Austin to give a seminar in the Department of Integrative Biology and was hosted by the Professor Molly Cummings and her amazing team.
2024
December
- Congrats to Julia for winning a Alberta Graduate Excellence Scholarship!
September
- Lauren is a co-author on a paper published in Science! ‘Architectural traditions in the structures built by cooperative weaver birds’ open access link: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adn2573
August
- We welcome Sofia Garrido as an MSc student to the ACRG!
- Congrats to the entire ACRG (Ben, Julia, Lauren, Brandon) for winning a group recognition Mentoring award from the Wisest summer research program
- Our work was featured in the Faculty of Science news: https://www.ualberta.ca/en/psychology/news-and-events/psychology-news/2024/july/birds-can-build-nests-but-do-they-have-style.html
July
- We welcome Avery Baldwin (Harry Ainlay High School in Edmonton, Alberta) and Isabella De Guzman (St. Mary’s Catholic School in Vegreville, Alberta) to the laboratory, supported by the 2024 Women in Scholarship, Engineering, Science, and Technology (WISEST) Summer Research Program
June
- Ben and Lauren traveled to London, ON Canada to attend the Animal Behavior Society conference. Dr. Ben Whittaker gave a talk “Lessons in love: does staying with the same partner facilitate learning about nest building?“
May
- Welcome to Henry Swartwood Garcia, who is an undergraduate intern from University of the Americas Puebla (Mexico), and will be working in the laboratory this summer supported by MITACS Globalink Research Internship
- Congrats to Brandon Neil for winning and NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award to work in the laboratory full time this summer.
- Congrats to Umama Mir for winning a URI Undergraduate Researcher Stipend with support from Scotiabank to support BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) researchers. We are thrilled to have Umama working in the laboratory full time this summer.
April
- Connor, Lauren and Ben attended the 31st International Conference on Comparative Cognition at its NEW location in Albuquerque, NM, USA. Connor and Ben each gave a talk and Lauren was busy in her last year as President of the Comparative Cognition Society.
- Congrats to Dr. Ben Whittaker on a first-authored paper: Protocol to quantify bird nest morphology via image analyses using linear measurements and geometric landmarks in STAR Protocols https://star-protocols.cell.com/protocols/3408
March
- Congrats to Dr. Connor Lambert for successfully defending his Ph.D. thesis!
February
- Congrats to Sofia Garrido Villegas and Chandler Carr who were each awarded a University of Alberta Graduate Recruitment Scholarship
January
- Congrats to Dr. Ben Whittaker on another first-authored paper: The roles of social information, asocial information, and initial bias in nest-building decisions. Whittaker, Benjamin A.; Balasubramanian, Gopika; Camacho-Alpízar, Andrés; Lambert, Connor T.; Guillette, Lauren M. https://doi.org/10.1037/com0000374
- Congratulations to Sofia Garrido Villegas (Universidad del Rosario, Colombia) who accepted an offer to start an MSc with the ACRG in September 2024
- Congratulations to Chandler Carr (Ohio Wesleyan University, USA) who accepted an offer to start an MSc with the ACRG in September 2024
- Lauren gave a talk at the Winter Animal Behavior Conference in Steamboat Springs, Colorado (USA)
2023
December
- Lauren gave a talk at the ASAB Winter Meeting 2023 in Edinburgh, UK
- Lauren gave a seminar talk for the Centre for Biological Diversity in the school of Biology at the University of St Andrews (UK)
November
- Congrats to Ben and Lauren for publishing a paper in The Conversation
- Congrats to Dr. Ben Whittaker for their first (of many!) first-author publications from the ACRG! Zebra finches have style: Nest morphology is repeatable and associated with experience, iScience, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2023.108194 we are very proud that this paper has two WISEST highschool students and one undergraduate honours student as co-authors
September
- Congratulations to Andrés for defending his PhD!
- We welcome Julia Self as an MSc student
- Congratulations to Julia Self for winning an NSERC CGS-M
- Congratulations to Julia Self for winning a Canadian Psychological Association Certificates of Academic Excellence for her honours thesis
July
- Congratulations to Connor for being selected to deliver a talk in the Allee Symposium at ABS 2023 in Portland, USA
- We extend a warm welcome to Maryam Abdelhamed a WISEST Summer Research Program student from Queen Elizabeth High School, Alberta who will be working with us for 6 weeks
- Ben and Connor presented at ABS 2023 in Portland, USA. Lauren went for moral support!
May
- We welcome two MITACS Globalink Research Interns for 12 weeks: Nakul Wewhare from IISER Pune, India and Priya Binwal from IISER Kolkata, India
April
- Congratulations to Connor won (for the second year in a row!) the “Best Publication by a Graduate Student in Comparative Cognition” from the Comparative Cognition Society for his paper: Lambert, C. T., Sahu, P. K., Sturdy, C. B., & Guillette, L. M. (2022). Among-individual differences in auditory and physical cognitive abilities in zebra finches. Learning & Behavior, 50, 389-404. https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13420-022-00520-w
- Congratulations to Andrés for winning the Ron Weisman Outstanding Student Presentation Award at the 30th International Conference on Comparative Cognition in Florida, USA.
March
- Congrats to Andrés who won a Kuczaj Memorial Travel Grant to attend the 30th International Conference on Comparative Cognition in Florida, USA in April.
- Congrats to Stefan Stanescu for winning an Undergraduate Research Initiative Summer Stipend and an NSERC USRA to continue their work this summer.
January
- Congrats to Julia Self for being awarded a Clare Patershuk Travel Award to present her ugrad honours thesis research at the 30th International Conference on Comparative Cognition in Florida, USA in April.
- Congrats to Andrés whose first-authored meta-analysis was published in the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review From whom do animals learn? A meta‑analysis on model‑based social learning: e/c23NU
- Congrats to Lauren who is now the Editor-in-Chief of Learning & Behavior.
2022
October
- Congrats to Connor Lambert for being awarded the prestigious Dorothy J Killam Memorial Graduate Prize. Connor was also invited to give a talk about his PhD research at the Killam Awards & Luncheon.
September
- Welcome to three new undergraduate team members: Nicole Gerle, Harleen Kooner and Stefan Stanescu! Read about these folks on our People page
August
- Ben and Andrés were awarded project from MITACS Globalink to hire two international undergraduate research assistants in summer 2023, congrats! See the job advert here on our opportunities page (applications due 22 September 2022).
July
- Lauren, Connor and Andrés presented at ABS 2022 in Costa Rica.
- Deborah and Anna joined the team as WISEST Summer Research Program students. Read more about them on our people page.
June
- Congrats to Andrés for being featured in the Psychology alumni and friends newsletter | Summer 2022 as the STAR student
- Lauren is named Editor-in-Chief of Learning & Behavior, announcement here.
- Karen Yeung joined the team as a Summer 2022 Mitacs Globalink Research Intern. Karen is an Ecology & Biodiversity (Intensive) major student at the University of Hong Kong who is also minoring in Biochemistry. Karen will be running experiments with Connor and Ben for the ManyBirds project. Welcome to the team!
May
- Connor Lambert was awarded an Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholarship Congratulations, Connor!
- Julia Self (URI – Undergraduate Summer Stipend) and Cailyn Poole (Research Assistant) are working in the laboratory this summer, and we are so glad to have them stay around!
April
- Lauren traveled to Indiana University to give a talk to the Integrative Study of Animal Behavior folks
- Connor, Andrés and Gopika all give talks at (virtual) CO3, the 29th International Conference on Comparative Cognition
- Connor won the inaugural “Best Publication by a Graduate Student in Comparative Cognition” from the Comparative Cognition Society for his paper: Lambert, CT, Guillette, LM (2021) The impact of environmental and social factors on learning: A meta-analysis. Biological Reviews, doi: 10.1002/BRV.12783
March
- Lauren gave the Departmental Seminar in the Department of Psychology at the University of Alberta
- Congratulations to ACRG BSc Psychology Honours Thesis student Julia Self who was awarded a Green & Gold Student Leadership and Professional Development Grant to attend the 2nd World Diversity in Leadership Conference from June 20-24, 2022 in Edmonton, Alberta
- Lauren gave a seminar to the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour Colloquium at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada
- Lauren gave a seminar to the Ecology, Evolution & Behaviour group at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada
- New paper by first-author and ACRG PhD Connor Lambert wit co-authors from our Department of Psychology colleagues Prateek Sahu and Dr. Chris Sturdy “Among-individual differences in auditory and physical cognitive abilities in zebra finches” published in Learning & Behavior
February
- New paper with Tas Vamos, Sue Healy and Simmone Meddle: “Involvement of the neural social behaviour network during social information acquisition in zebra finches” bit.ly/3Bnves5
- Awarded Animal Behavior Society Outreach Grant 2022
- Congrats for former ACRG teammate Harsimran Khinda who will start in the New York University College of Dentistry (USA) PhD program this summer!
January
- New team member: Dr. Ben Whittaker joins the team as a postdoctoral researcher. Follow Ben on twitter @ba_whittaker
- New(ish) team member: Jessica Hewitt joins the team as an independent studies student. Jessica has volunteered with the ACRG for over a year.
- Congrats to Gopika Balasubramanian for successfully defending her MSc thesis!