I’m Willa Lane, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge. I’m a member of the Comparative Cognition Lab, and I’m funded by a Gates Cambridge scholarship. My research primarily focuses on the interplay of camouflage and cognition using cephalopods as a model system. I study cuttlefish, which are a type of cephalopod (not actually a fish!) closely related to squid and octopuses. I also work on questions related to perception and learning in corvids.

This interdisciplinary work draws from diverse fields including marine biology, evolutionary and behavioural ecology, ethology (animal behavior), cognitive psychology, philosophy, and machine learning. My laboratory-based research takes place in collaboration with the Marine Biological Association of the UK and the CEEC Lab at the University of Caen.

I graduated from the University of Delaware in 2023 with an Honors B.S. with distinction in marine science and a minor in psychology. I have short bios on the University of Cambridge psychology department website here and the Gates Cambridge website here. You can view my LinkedIn profile here, and you can email me at wl442 (at) cam.ac.uk.