Introduce yourself!

     Kunal is an evolutionary biologist interested in studying the phenomenon of speciation and the underlying evolutionary processes as well as biogeography and phylogeography of the Indian biota.

     As a Ph.D. student, he is currently studying systematics and phylogeography of the Himalayan langurs using phylogenetic and population genetic tools"

     Ishika has an MSc in Wildlife Biology and Conservation from the National Centre for Biological Sciences, India, and is currently a Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Wildlife Studies. Her academic and applied interests lie in an interdisciplinary space across ethnoprimatology, social sciences, citizen science, science communication, and conservation education.

     Following her work on human-primate interactions in the Nicobar Islands, for her doctoral research, she plans to study the underlying mechanisms that drive a range of interactions between human communities and nonhuman primates in the northeastern states of India.

     Mohan's primary interest is wildlife conservation through behavioral ecology. As part of the Bio-psychology laboratory, he is involved in various research projects on ecology, behavior, and conservation of different primate species.

     He is working on niche functionality and movement behavior of Indian giant squirrel for my Ph.D. at the University of Mysore. 

     Ram is interested in understanding the evolution and diversification of macaques in the Indian subcontinent, which is home to all three groups of Asian macaques. While macaques are thought to have colonised Asia by early-Pliocene, the when and how of their occurrence in the subcontinent (at least six species occur here, out of which three are endemic) remains largely unknown.

     He is currently aiming to pry the demographic histories of these macaques and the genetic mechanisms underlying their speciation, including hybridization, from their genomes.

Introduce yourself!

     After completing her BS-MS from IISER-Mohali, Mehreen got interested in animal behaviour and Ecology. She pursued Ph.D. from CES, IISc and worked on the ecology and distribution of Himalayan gray langur in Kashmir. She has also worked towards understanding the feeding ecology of Himalayan langurs in seasonal habitats of the Himalayas.

     She is interested in documenting wildlife through photography. Currently, she runs a NGO 'Wildlife Research and Conservation Foundation'. They work towards bringing awareness about the wildlife of Kashmir and involve students in research-based projects related to wildlife conservation.

     Smitha has been studying the behavior, ecology, and threats to the slender loris in their natural habitats. She developed her interest in lorises after she had rescued two Slender Lorises at the Indian Institute of Science (Bengaluru) in 2011 while working on wildlife-related projects.  

     She is an independent researcher, currently completing her Ph.D. and working on multiple projects on slender lorises in India.

     Taniya is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Delhi. Her work focuses on human-monkey interactions and behavioral adaptations among rhesus macaques in urban and semi-urban areas.