Remembering Stan
On 14 April 2016, the scientific community lost Dr. Stan Kuczaj. For the past 20 years, Stan directed the Marine Mammal Behavior and Cognition Lab at the University of Southern Mississippi, where he inspired students and conducted novel dolphin cognition research. He was a beloved teacher, researcher, and long-time friend of the National Marine Mammal Foundation, and worked as a research consultant for the Foundation in its early years.
With a legacy of more than 50 master’s and doctoral level students working in a variety of fields, Stan studied bottlenose dolphins and sea lions in managed care facilities, wild dolphins in the Mississippi Sound, wild rough-toothed dolphins off Utila, Honduras, sperm whales in the Gulf of Mexico, and many other species, including Asian elephants. He conducted cognitive and behavioral studies focused on calf development, play, social interactions across age classes, environmental enrichment, personality differences, the importance of contact during social interactions, and the role of emotion in animal behavior. His work in acoustics explored the development of echolocation in dolphin calves, sperm whale codas, individual whistles in mother calf reunions, and the use of sound during cooperative tasks.
Stan believed in pursuing challenging questions in human and animal cognition with rigor, candor, and a spirit of intellectual adventure. He was a notable figure in the marine mammal community, deeply passionate about his work, and will be truly missed. In honor of Stan’s memory, the Kuczaj Memorial Fund supports students and researchers examining questions in animal cognition, behavior, and development.
The Kuczaj Memorial Travel Grant
The Kuczaj Memorial Fund supports the Kuczaj Memorial Travel Grant. The grant is administered in memory of Dr. Stan Kuczaj, who was a leader in the study of comparative animal cognition, particularly within marine mammals. Stan believed in pursuing challenging topics in human and animal cognition with rigor, candor, and the spirit of intellectual adventure. The Kuczaj Memorial Travel Grant is administered with the goal of preserving and promoting Stan’s interests and beliefs in scientific pursuit.
Applicant requirements
Grants are for $500 in travel allowances to be applied toward conference fees, food and lodging, or travel expenses.
Grant applications are now being accepted. Two grants will be awarded and grantees will be selected and notified of the award by March 15, 2026. Applications must be submitted to Dr. Heather Hill no later than February 28, 2026. Download the application here.
Applicants for the Kuczaj Memorial Travel Grant must:
- Be enrolled in a graduate program at the time of the application.
- Have their abstract accepted for presentation at the Conference on Comparative Cognition.
- Submit their abstract for evaluation and ranking.
- Provide evidence of graduate enrollment. The Kuczaj Memorial Travel Grant is determined through a competitive ranking process based upon the quality of the abstracts submitted.
Miranda Trapani
Miranda is a PhD candidate in the Psychology department at the CUNY Graduate Center, with a
focus in Cognitive and Comparative Psychology. Her research focuses on the relationship
between sociality and cognition by assessing the capacity of solitary species, namely the giant
panda, in social environments where cognitive mechanisms can inform adaptive outcomes,
such as mate choice or cooperative problem solving. Not only is she interested in this from the
evolutionary perspective of understanding how cognition is organized in the brain, but also how
decisions in interactions with conspecifics and the environment can be applied to conservation
strategies.
Elena Kerjean
Elena Kerjean is a PhD student studying honeybee cognition at the Research Center on Animal
Cognition, University of Toulouse, France. Her work investigates how these insects process
numerical information and what this reveals about the fundamental mechanisms and evolution
of cognition. More broadly, she thrives in connecting different fields of research to nurture
creativity and collaborative work. She is deeply committed to fostering an academic
environment where inclusion and diversity are actively embedded in everyday practices and
decisions.
