March CCA Meeting
March 11thth @ Glenallan Elementary School – 12520 Heurich Road, Silver Spring, MD
Meeting room opens at 12 pm (Meeting to start at 12:30)
Meeting from 12:30-4:30 pm - Speaker begins at 1:30 pm
March Speaker – Dr. Riva Riley
Dr. Riva Riley is a member of the faculty with the University Honors Program at the University of Maryland. Her research is focused on social behavior and its consequences for individuals in social groups; she is especially interested in how individuals can use their own social influence to change their social environment and improve their prospects. She studies a delightful little fish, Corydoras catfish, which lives in the Amazon rainforest. After observing wild fish in the field and conducting laboratory studies, she described a novel communication style, a tactile nudge, that individual fish use to communicate with their fellow group members. She uses this nudging behavior to help understand how social influences and group dynamics can modify social evolution and lead to complex social behaviors (including our own human behavior). She received her PhD from the University of Cambridge and her B.A. from Harvard University.
