Elisabetta Versace - principal investigator and enzyme of the lab

I am a Senior Lecturer in the School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences at Queen Mary University of London, Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute and Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow.
Within Queen Mary, I am a member of the Institute of Applied Data Science, Digital Environment Research Institute, Advanced Centre for Robotics and Centre for Intelligent Sensing.


Research: As a comparative neuroscientist, I investigate the interface between spontaneous and learned cognitive abilities. I'm interested  in the building blocks of intelligent behaviour, from early life responses of inexperienced chicks, to abstract generalisation and fine learning in dancers (check out weMove web app!). It's broad, I know... it's more fun to learn and discover more!

To gain a broader understanding of animal and artificial minds, I  enjoy working with different species and systems, from domestic chicks to tortoises, fruit flies, bees, as well as humans (including dancers and choreographers), artificial intelligence and robotics.

My updated publications are here. If you are curious, some highlights of our research on predispositions, learning, lateralisation, experimental evolution, artificial grammar learning and more are listed in the publications section.
Do you like our group? Some opportunities to join the lab are listed here.


Email: e.versace at qmul.ac.uk

Address: School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, 327 Mile End Road,  E1 4NS London


Personal X account: @eli_versace, where you discover that I love books, ballet, evolution and solaristics, among other things.

Erico Montes while creating a choreography at Queen Mary University of London