My name is Yuqi (Ruby) Guo, and I’m a PhD student at the University of Michigan working with Drs. Jacinta Beehner and Shelly Flagel. I received my BS in Animal Science from Cornell University and my MS in Biology from Tufts University. My previous research includes investigating the effects of early-life social separation on song development in zebra finches and testing working memory capacity in common marmosets using touchscreen tasks.

I’m broadly interested in how experience shapes individual variation in cognition and behavior. With white-faced capuchins, I use AI-based apparatus in the field to characterize cue-directed behavior in an associative learning task. I’m particularly interested in whether there is consistent individual variation in this behavior and how it relates to life history and adversity. By combining experiments, field observation, and physiological measures, I hope to better understand the mechanisms underlying behavioral variability and resilience in the wild.

When I’m not working or in nature, I enjoy (in order of time spent) playing the trumpet, teaching English to Chinese immigrants, walking dogs for a local shelter, and making science communication drawings.