We welcome Ariana Strandburg-Peshkin to the Zukunftskolleg
Ariana Strandburg-Peshkin is the first of our new fellows from the 13th call for applications who joined the Zukunftskolleg. She has started her 5-year Research Fellowship in March and is affiliated with the Department of Biology.
Ariana did her PhD at Princeton University. There she studied collective animal behaviour in fish and baboons with Iain Couzin. Before that, she did her undergraduate degree at Swarthmore College, where she studied Physics. She did her post doc at Max Planck Institute for Ornithology (6 months) and then at the University of Zurich (1 year) before coming to Konstanz. There she worked with Marta Manser studying movement ecology of meerkats.
Her research at the Zukunftskolleg will be about how animal groups communicate and coordinate with one another to make collective decisions and engage in collective action. “My project is highly interdisciplinary, integrating field biology, bio-logging, and quantitative analyses”, explains Ariana. “To make this happen, collaboration is key - I collaborate with a network of other researchers including field biologists and computer scientists.” Besides doing research her hobbies include cooking, playing board games, biking, traveling, and trying to learn German.