From Puppy to Partner: Unlocking Canine Potential for Service Roles

Featured Speaker: Dr. Emily Bray

What are button-pressing dogs trying to tell us?

Featured Speaker: Clive Wynne, PhD

Clive Wynne, originally from England, studied at University College London and the University of Edinburgh. Before joining Arizona State University in 2013, he served on the University of Western Australia and the University of Florida faculties. His research centers on comparative psychology, focusing on the behaviors of dogs and their wild relatives. His team studies how pet dogs adapt to human behavior, applies behavioral techniques to address problem behaviors, examines shelter dog behaviors that impact adoption, improves sniffer dog training, and explores human interaction as social enrichment for captive canids.

Consumers and their Animal Guardians: Why Pets Are More Like Parents than Partners.

Featured Speaker: Dr. Martin Reimann

Martin Reimann is an associate professor of marketing at the Eller College of Management, with appointments as an associate professor in the Department of Psychology, the College of Veterinary Medicine, and the Cognitive Science Graduate Interdisciplinary Program.

Reimann holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of Southern California, a Habilitation, and a PhD in Marketing from TU Freiberg (Germany). Before joining Eller, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University and a W3 professor of marketing at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg (Germany). He applies functional neuroimaging, behavioral experiments, and quantitative methods to investigate how and why people (1) consume product experiences and (2) form, maintain, and dissolve social relations with other humans, products, and pets.

Title: Adventures With C-Barq: How far can we go with proxy measures of canine behavior

Featured Speaker: Dr. James Serpell

James Serpell is an Emeritus Professor of Animal Welfare at the School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, which he joined in 1993. His research focuses on the behavior and welfare of dogs and cats, human attitudes to animals, and the history and psychology of human-animal relationships and interactions. He is also the creator of the C-BARQ, which is currently the world’s most widely used canine behavioral assessment instrument.

Social Determinants of Health Approach to Human-Animal Interaction Research

Featured Speaker: Jennifer W. Applebaum, MS, PhD

Jennifer W. Applebaum, MS, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental & Global Health at the University of Florida’s College of Public Health and Health Professions. Trained as a Medical Sociologist with a background in animal sheltering, Dr. Applebaum’s research focuses broadly on the implications of social inequalities on human and companion animal health and well-being. Drawing from sociological theory and concepts to take a social approach to the One Health framework, her research is interested in the intersection of stress, structural-level social processes, the social determinants of health, and the human-animal bond.

Human-Animal Research with Dr. Evan MacLean | Oxytocin Pathways in the Context of Human-Animal Interaction

Dr. Evan MacLean is an Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona, where he holds appointments in Anthropology, Veterinary Medicine, Psychology, and Cognitive Science. He is the founder and Director of the Arizona Canine Cognition Center, which studies how dog behavior, cognition, genetics, and neuroendocrinology research can improve how dogs are selected, bred, and trained for societal roles. In addition to his work on animal behavior and cognition, Dr. MacLean studies the biological mechanisms involved in human-animal interaction, focusing on the neuropeptides oxytocin and vasopressin. His work has been highlighted in media outlets, including The New York Times, National Public Radio, the BBC, and National Geographic.