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About

Chiara Spinello is a behavioral biologist whose research lies at the intersection of animal cognition, robotics, and conservation. Her work focuses on how fish—particularly zebrafish and mosquitofish—respond to biologically inspired robots, using these interactive stimuli to study fear, learning, and predator-prey dynamics. In her highly cited 2013 study, she demonstrated that acute ethanol administration alters zebrafish preference for a robotic stimulus, opening new avenues for understanding the neurobehavioral effects of substances. Her 2019 work on zebrafish responses to an interactive robotic predator (54 citations) provided a controlled, repeatable method for studying fear and anxiety without the variability of live predators. That same year, she explored the use of robotic predators to manage invasive mosquitofish, a novel conservation approach that has garnered 49 citations. More recently, she showed that zebrafish can learn to associate a robotic stimulus with an aversive outcome, advancing our understanding of fish cognition. Spinello’s innovative integration of robotics and ethology has not only deepened knowledge of fish behavior but also offered practical tools for invasive species control, making her a leading figure in this emerging field.