About

I am a psychologist, biological anthropologist, primatologist, and incoming assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, where I will be accepting graduate students this cycle. Information for prospective PhD students can be found below. I co-direct the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project in Kibale National Park, Uganda, a 31-year-ongoing study on the largest known group of chimpanzees in the world, which recently fissioned. 

At Harvard, I am currently a Research Associate in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. I was previously a Harvard Radcliffe Fellow (2025-2026) and a Mind Brain Behavior Postdoctoral Fellow in Human Evolutionary Biology and Psychology (2020-2022). 

My research aims to uncover a biological basis for how and why social relationships shape human life. Through longitudinal studies of our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, in the wild, I examine how social relationships contribute to learning, development, health and evolutionary fitness across the life course, with a current focus on the tumultuous life stage of adolescence. Ngogo chimpanzees are the heart of my research program. I have also studied wild bonobos in Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve in Democratic Republic of Congo. For certain questions I take broader cross-species approaches and work in sanctuary as well as wild contexts.

I received my BA with Distinction from Duke University, my PhD from the University of Michigan, completed postdoctoral training at Harvard and Duke, and was previously an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Utah.

My research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, The National Geographic Society, the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation, the Nacey-Maggioncalda Foundation, the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, the University of Utah, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, Duke University and the Duke Lemur Center.

For Prospective Students:

In the Fall 2026 cycle, I will be accepting PhD students in the behavioral and systems neuroscience area of psychology at UC Berkeley. Details on the program and application process can be found here. My own position in the department begins in January 2027.

My research group at UC Berkeley will combine perspectives from evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology and neuroscience to understand patterns of learning and social relationships across the life course. We will take multi-species perspectives and our methods will be largely grounded in studying humans and other animals in naturalistic contexts.

In this application cycle, I am open to students whose interests align with other aspects of my research program, but am particularly keen to accept students who want to study wild chimpanzees in Kibale National Park, Uganda where I co-direct the 31-year ongoing Ngogo Chimpanzee Project. I am also particularly interested in understanding sensitive windows of development in chimpanzees, including adolescence and the transition to motherhood. If you are planning to apply to graduate school I encourage you to read this paper which reviews the long history of wild chimpanzee research and current questions I’m interested in asking through studying them. In your application, it’s helpful if you can be as specific as possible detailing questions and even hypotheses you have. I do not expect you to come into graduate school with set questions and hypotheses already; these are skills you’ll develop as a PhD student (and that I want you to develop after spending time observing chimpanzees yourself!). But, seeing you craft questions can help me to understand your interests and what it might be like to brainstorm together.

Next, if applying to work with wild chimpanzees, it’s important you consider the fieldwork required. A PhD based on Ngogo chimpanzee research requires spending considerable time there. The general expectation is that you’ll spend two summers at Ngogo developing ideas and training under me and other experienced team members (~5-6 months total) followed by 12-15 months of data collection for your thesis. While collecting these data you’ll live at the remote “off-the-grid” rainforest station, sleep in a tent, use a pit latrine (outhouse), take bucket showers, live communally with a small group of people for months at a time, hike after chimpanzees off-trail (getting scratched by twigs and plants) for 9-13 hours per day, and be surrounded by whirring, crawling insects, cacophonies of bird calls, and elephants around whom you must navigate safely. You cannot travel back-and-forth to town during field seasons because of our strict quarantine measures used to protect chimpanzees from human diseases (which have been empirically demonstrated to be effective). You’ll be expected to be part of a team where you take responsibilities to care for others, help others to care for you, and contribute to general well-being and others’ research goals while at camp. 

Importantly, I, and the rest of our team will train you in all of these skills and safety. I am devoted to training all students at Ngogo to be capable, safe, and open to the wonder of being a chimpanzee researcher. Ngogo is a beautiful, extraordinary place to be - my favorite in the world - and the community you will be part of creating there is one I deeply cherish. Nothing can quite compare to spending a day with chimpanzees who let you into their world. That said, it’s completely reasonable for this type of work not to be something you want to take on in your life. It is challenging to be physically apart from loved ones for long stretches of time (though the Ngogo team is its own family, which can help). It can be hard to know how you’ll find the rainforest living and working conditions without actually being there. Often people think they’ll love it yet are deeply rattled by the insects, for example. Equally often, people are uncertain because they have never been camping and aren’t used to extreme hiking (or, like me have childhood fear of spiders), and they entirely fall in love with life at Ngogo. 

On meeting: Because I receive many inquiries from prospective students, I am unfortunately not able to meet individually with everyone before applications are submitted. You do not need to meet with me before applying, and please do not feel that you’ll be disadvantaged in the admissions process if you do not. The information below covers most of what I would discuss in an initial meeting. You are welcome to email me with questions that are not answered here and also to introduce yourself and why you’re interested in joining my group. 

For Ugandan students: Our team often holds online short courses, field courses, and 1-2 month internships at Ngogo itself for undergraduate students and postgraduates in Uganda in the spring and summer (May - August). If these opportunities are available for a particular summer, we will advertise them via university list-servs and I will post them on this site.