We are happy to announce the recipients of our Open Research Methods Fellowship recipients: Grace Blackburn, Christopher Shoukry, and Ben Whittaker. Alongside MM1 leads and members, the fellows will work on finalizing the study design and writing the lab manual that will be used by all researchers involved in the study. Welcome new fellows!
Dr. Grace Blackburn is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Central Queensland University, whose research focuses on the behaviour, cognition, and conservation of native Australian birds. Grace recently completed her PhD at the University of Western Australia, where she investigated how cognition can help Western Australian magpies to buffer against the behavioural impacts of anthropogenic noise. Grace is particularly interested in how animals in urban areas use their cognitive abilities to survive and thrive in a human-dominated landscape.
Christopher Shoukry is a Ph.D. student in the Developmental Science program at Florida International University. His research in the Human and Non-Human Developmental Science (HANDS) Lab examines comparative cognition and motor development in non-human primates, with a particular focus on how vision guides motor function. More broadly, he is interested in exploring evolutionary perspectives on cognition and behavior using experimental methodologies and open science practices. Through this work, he aims to advance reproducible, collaborative research that deepens our understanding of how cognitive and motor systems have evolved across species.
Dr. Ben Whittaker is a postdoctoral researcher in the Animal Cognition Research Group at the Department of Psychology, University of Alberta. Their work investigates the causes and consequences of bias on cognitive processes, which they study by testing how birds integrate information from different sources (e.g. asocial experience, social and environmental cues) while learning to build a nest.
This fellowship is supported by the Open Scholarship Catalytic Award to ManyManys 1, granted by the Open Research Community Accelerator (ORCA).