Laura Chouinard-Thuly, PhD candidate
W2/2G
Stewart Biology Building
1205 Dr. Penfield
McGill University
Montréal, Québec, Canada
Info
I am a PhD candidate at McGill University, where I study social behaviours and social learning in a very tiny tropical fish, the guppy. I am also very active in the teaching and development of efficient teaching and learning strategies in science. After completing my undergraduate degree at McGill, I did my Masters in Scotland, where I created animations to study social learning in sticklebacks. Other than my unconditional love for animals, nature, and BBC documentaries, I love doing outdoors sports with friends or students, teaching, photography, participating in awareness raising events, and discovering unexplored places.
Work experience with computer animated stimuli
PhD research. McGill University, Canada.
2013 - present
I am currently working on building a new computer-animated stimuli, but this time presenting Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata). The goal is to produce an animation that reliable replaces live demonstrators to study social learning.
Master's research. University of St Andrews, Scotland.
2011 - 2012
I completed my Masters degree in Kevin Laland's lab, at the University of St. Andrews, where I studied public information use by ninespine sticklebacks, Pungitius pungitius. I specifically created​ computer-animated stimuli in Blender to identify behavioural cues used by fish to collect public information. 3D animations are a novel and versatile tool in the study of animal behaviour, that allows researchers to accurately isolate and control the demonstrators' actions.
