Canine: PiperCub & Huck
Travis Stanitis (’26). Travis joined the Benowitz-Fredericks lab in Fall 2024 and graduated in May 2026 with a major in biology and a minor in chemistry. He was also a student-athlete on the Bucknell Men’s Crew team and was a beach lifeguard. While in the lab, Travis worked on a project to extract cortisol from primate hair and saliva to quantify it using tandem mass spectrometry. In addition to traditional lab work, he spent the Summer 2025 on Middleton Island, Alaska, collecting samples for the Benowitz-Fredericks Lab and working with other seabird species. Travis presented his work at the Kalman Symposium at Bucknell University in April 2026. Post-graduation, Travis is working as a medical writer/scribe and applying to medical school.
Riley Cahill (’26). Riley worked with BORIS software to quantify kittiwake chicks behavior from videos, and contributed to genetically sexing chicks using PCR and gel electrophoresis. After graduation, she is applying to medical school.
Maria Pisciotta (’25). Maria was an Animal Behavior major who spent a field season on Middleton Island, AK in the summer of 2024 collecting data on black-legged kittiwakes and learning about different species of seabirds. She completed her honors thesis about predictors of siblicide in kittiwakes. She loves to spend time outdoors, skiing and hiking, and also loves to cook.
Amelia (“Mia”) Ruck (’25). Mia was an Animal Behavior major with minors in Environmental Studies and Creative Writing who joined the lab in the Fall of 2024. After graduating, she has worked at an aquarium and at the Smithsonian. Outside academics, Mia worked at Bucknell’s rock wall and challenge course and volunteers as a Buckwild and Outdoor Education Leadership (OEL) Adventure Trip leader. Mia loves to spend as much time outdoors as possible; whether hiking, snowboarding, bouldering, wake surfing, fishing, or sailing, she loves it all.
Stephanie Walsh (’24). Steph joined the lab in Fall of 2022 with the goal of acquiring expertise in behavioral analyses. She developed an ethogram to evaluate parent:chick interactions, and taught herself to use the software BORIS, using it to quantify ~60 hours of footage of kittiwake chicks and adults. Half those data were used for her own honor’s thesis, which she presented in a talk at SICB in January 2024 (an awesome accomplishment for an undergraduate). The other half is part of an in-prep paper about the effects of exogenous corticosterone on behavior. Outside the lab she was a Biology major and a competitive swimmer. She earned a MS degree in clinical psychology, worked in clinical research at Memorial Sloan Kettering, and as of 2026, is headed to Arizona to start her PhD in legal psychology.
Alex Le (’24). Alex was a neuroscience major, a stand-up comedienne, and choir vocalist. She contributed to a variety of projects in the lab, conducting DNA extraction and PCR/electrophoresis for sexing, assisting with EIAs and running colorimetric assays for metabolites. She presented a poster about triglyceride levels in kittiwake chicks at SICB in January 2024. She started a PhD program at Rutgers in 2024.
Ali Jackson (’25). Ali held a prestigious Presidential Fellowship at Bucknell University, and started her work in our lab her first semester in college. She developed expertise in DNA extraction, PCR and gel electrophoresis for genetic sexing (she sexed hundred of kittiwake chicks from red blood cell samples), and was involved in running EIAs. She was a psychology major who is interested in a career in pediatric medicine, but she transferred to Thomas Jefferson and we missed her!
