NEIWORTH PRIMATE COGNITION LAB
Student Research Opportunities
If you are interested in monkey care and/or monkey research, please email Julie Neiworth. She keeps a running list of interested students and tries to work them into the lab within 1 year of the request.
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There are various options for this kind of work as well. Julie offers paid care positions at 3 hours/week, and students doing care are automatically able to do research, but on their own time (outside of the 3 hours/week of care). If the project is independently developed by the student, the student can take an independent study for 3 – 6 credits, depending upon the amount of work, the number of meetings needed, and the writing involved. Finally, Julie has an NIH grant through which she has proposed 3 major projects, and there are funds during the terms and during breaks for students to help with those projects.
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All research students must help with some care so that the monkeys recognize you as a neutral or food-giving entity. The monkeys need to see you at least 2–3 times per week to remember you, and in order for them to ignore you and play a game or participate in research, they must be very familiar with you.
Monkey tours start here!
If you have concerns about the monkey research here, or just want to meet the monkeys, it’s possible under controlled conditions for you to see them. We have to arrange a tour so that their days are not disrupted continually by people’s staring eyes (which monkeys typically take to mean you are threatening them, by the way!). These are not zoo animals and we do not habituate them to crowds or to lots of people around. We want the monkeys to form social groups, to behave normally, and to regard humans as neutral or even as intruders (which would be normal by monkey standards).
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To see the monkeys, please contact Julie Neiworth, or you can request to see the monkeys from a current monkey researcher (see the Research Team page for the current year). Tours have to be scheduled so that only 1 happens per day (or none), so that the timing is not just before a research session is starting, and so that they are not disruptive of any of their meals. So flexibility is key, as is being willing to wait one or two days until we can work you in. Student researchers schedule tours through Julie, so there will be a delay for this scheduling to happen as well.
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Alternatively, once per year in the spring (during non-COVID years), Julie Neiworth opens the labs and animal facilities on the psychology side to tours from anyone interested. These tours are 15-minute visits to the monkey rooms and labs, and we conduct them for about 2 hours. Flyers advertise this event each year in Olin and Hulings Halls.​