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Lisa O'Bryan

Lisa O'Bryan

Rice Academy of Fellows

Psychological Sciences

CONTACT

obryan@rice.edu

SURF Mentoring

Potential projects/topics: Potential projects include: I study collective behavior- how group-wide patterns of behavior and decision-making emerge from the interactions of many individuals. This work not only requires understanding the biology, behavior, and cognition of individuals within these groups but also the development of quantitative methods for tracking and analyzing data from many individuals. Thus, potential projects could fall within the fields of BioSciences or Engineering.

[BioSciences]: Explore questions related to the behavioral ecology of wild baboons and/or domesticated herds (goats and sheep).

[Engineering]: Classification, detection, and/or characterization of behaviors and interactions from wearable sensor data in free-ranging non-human animals (wild baboons, domesticated herds).

Required qualifications or skills: No pre-requisites required. Seeking Bioscience or Engineering majors

Direct mentor: Faculty/P.I.

Research Areas

Dr. Lisa O’Bryan received her B.S. in Zoology from Texas A&M University and her Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution and Behavior from the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on the role communication plays in the structure and function of social groups (both animal and human) and also how the dynamics of these groups and their broader environment affect communication patterns. For her Ph.D., she studied the foraging, social and communication behaviors of chimpanzees through observational field studies and captive experiments. For her first postdoc, she received a James S. McDonnell Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in Studying Complex Systems and joined the New Jersey Institute of Technology to develop and use wearable tracking devices for studying the role communication plays in the collective behavior of free-ranging animals, including wild baboons and domesticated herds.