Chelsea is a new PhD student in the Hobson Lab who started in January 2021. She earned her undergraduate degree at Mills College in Oakland, CA, where she studied behavioral ecology of California ground squirrels in Dr. Jenn Smith’s lab. Chelsea studied for a M.Sc. In Applied Animal Behaviour and Animal Welfare from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, U.K. For her capstone project she joined the Auersperg Lab at the Messerli Research Institute of the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna to study social cognition in Goffin cockatoos (see the paper here).
Chelsea was also a field assistant on our lab’s monk parakeet project in Spring 2020, although the field season was unfortunately cut drastically short due to the pandemic. You can read more about that work here and read our paper about some of that work here.
Chelsea’s plan for research in the Hobson Lab is to study the relationship between sociality and stress in Monk parakeets. She is interested in using the study of animal behavior to assess and improve animal welfare in scientific and evidence-based ways.
Welcome to the lab Chelsea!
