Position Title
PhD Student
Animal Behavior
My name is Izzy (she/her) and I am a PhD student and NSF GRFP fellow in the Animal Behavior Graduate Group. I joined the lab in the fall of 2023 and am currently working on projects relating to titi monkey sociality, coordination, and mate choice.
I completed my undergraduate degree in Biology & Society at Cornell University in 2021, where I studied the vocalizations of tarsiers and gibbons at the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics. During my time as an undergraduate, I was a volunteer firefighter/EMT and worked at the Cornell Equine Park caring for research horses.
I took two years between Cornell and UC Davis to work full time and gain more research experience. I worked for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation in Washington, D.C., and volunteered at the Smithsonian National Zoo’s Small Mammal House.
When I’m not on campus or at the Primate Center, I like to go on hikes, go birding, work on my wood carving, read, and crochet. Please feel free to reach out (iakier@ucdavis.edu) with any questions!
- National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow
- Clink, D. J., Kier, I., Ahmad, A. H., & Klinck, H. (2023). A workflow for the automated detection and classification of female gibbon calls from long-term acoustic recordings. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 11, 1071640.
- Comella, I., Tasirin, J. S., Klinck, H., Johnson, L. M., & Clink, D. J. (2022). Investigating note repertoires and acoustic tradeoffs in the duet contributions of a basal haplorrhine primate. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 10, 910121.
- Clink, D. J., Comella, I., & Zafar, M. (2022). A remote lab exercise to introduce students to the fundamentals of bioacoustics using smartphones and R. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 151(4_Supplement), A247-A247.
- Future Undergraduate Science Educators Program