Ed Wasserman received his B.A. from UCLA and his Ph.D. from Indiana University. He’s held visiting appointments in England, Russia, Japan, and France. His research has investigated a critical question: namely, is there cognitive continuity between humans and animals or do humans possess unique cognitive mechanisms for adapting to the demands of survival? He’s studied the behavior of eight different species (chickens, pigeons, parrots, crows, rats, baboons, bonobos, and humans) using a variety of proven and novel tasks.

Leyre Castro received her Ph.D. from the University of Deusto (Bilbao, Spain). She began her research in experimental psychology studying the associative basis of causal learning in humans. She has published studies on causal learning, categorization, attention, same-different discrimination, memory, metacognition, unsupervised learning, figure-ground perception, task switching and cognitive flexibility, with both humans and pigeons. She is interested in the similarities and differences among species at behavioral, neural, and computational levels.

Odysseus is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Cognition program at the University of Iowa. His current research explores how humans and pigeons differ in their representation of perceptually similar stimuli. From rocks and medical images to simple shapes and colors, Odysseus employs a wide variety of stimuli and tasks. On his free time, Odysseus enjoys listening to and playing classical trumpet repertoire, spending time with loved ones, and eating good food.

Caleb is a fourth-year undergraduate student majoring in Psychology (B.A.). He joined the Comparative Cognition Laboratory in the summer of 2025 and is grateful for the opportunity to be a part of research. He is fascinated by the mind in a number of ways, which has only grown during his time at the lab. He hopes to continue being a part of psychological research in the future. During his free time, he enjoys reading, listening to music, and watching basketball.

Jacob is a fourth-year undergraduate student majoring in psychology with a minor in Philosophy. In his spare time he enjoys playing his guitars, being with friends, eating and cooking, and listening to music. He loves all kinds of animals and is fascinated by research into their learning and understanding.

Bella is a third-year undergraduate double majoring in Psychology and Counseling and Behavioral Health Services. She has plans of going to graduate school for counseling psychology, potentially with a concentration in health psychology. Interesting fact about her is that she drives the Cambus and has a CDL.

Francisca is originally from Santiago, Chile. She received her PhD in 2025, from the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at The University of Iowa, under the mentorship of Dr Edward Wasserman. Her research interests focus on animal and developmental cognition, and learning across species and development. Currently she is a postdoctoral student at Ohio State University.

Victor is a postdoctoral research associate at Cardiff University, UK, developing mathematical models of Pavlovian conditioning that account for the acquisition and expression of reciprocal associations. A first-generation college student from Chile, he received his PhD in 2020, from the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at The University of Iowa, under the mentorship of Dr Edward Wasserman. During his time at Iowa, Victor took a comparative approach to the study of decision-making, attentional processes, and categorization, using pigeons and human subjects, with a heavy emphasis on developing formal models for the explanation of these phenomena. Dogs or cats? Dogs. Favorite food? Spaghetti.

Ellen is a postdoctoral research associate at Cardiff University, UK, As a graduate student, she was interested in the roles that associative learning and declarative rule use play in categorization, as well as how associative mechanisms might serve as the foundation of various complex, "higher-order" processes.