Halmos College Department of Biological Sciences Hosts Sciences of Yawning Symposium, Nov. 1

On Friday, November 1st from 3-4 p.m., Andrew Gallup, Ph.D. presented his lecture, “The Surprising Science of Yawning” in Mailman Auditorium, Mailman-Hollywood Building.

Dr. Gallup presented on his brain-cooling hypothesis of yawning along with supporting research on humans and other animals.  Dr. Gallup is an evolutionary cognitive neuroscientist. His research spans a variety of topics, including contagious behavior and comparative neuroanatomy, brain thermoregulation and vigilance, collective behavior and social cognition, aggression and sexual conflict, the evolution of cooperation, winner and loser effects, biomarkers of Darwinian fitness, and the effects of neuromodulation on adaptive responses.

Dr. Gallup received his bachelor’s in Psychology from The State University of New York at Albany. He received his PhD in Biological Sciences from Binghamton University under the mentorship of Dr. David Sloan Wilson. He went on to complete a postdoc at Princeton University in the collective behavior lab lead by Iain Couzin (now Director of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Department of Collective Behaviour). Dr. Gallup is currently a professor of Psychology at The State University of New York Polytechnic Institute. He also serves as the director of the Adaptive Behavior and Cognition (ABC) Lab at SUNY Poly. Dr. Gallup is a Fellow of The Psychonomic Society, and affiliated faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences at Nova Southeastern University. Dr. Gallup is a rising star having already published over 75 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. His research has been of broad general interest, covered by large media outlets including National Geographic, Scientific American, and The New York Times.