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 camouflage and cognition in cuttlefish, which are a type of cephalopod (not actually a fish!) closely related to squid and octopuses.

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 EthoS 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’m excited to combine both disciplines for my PhD. 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.