Dr. Maureen McCarthy is a biologist specializing in primate behavior and conservation. She earned a master’s degree studying chimpanzees who use American Sign Language to communicate. She then went on to study primates in their natural environment, doing fieldwork on Tibetan macaques in China and chimpanzees in Uganda. She earned her PhD in Integrative and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Southern California by using a genetic approach to study an endangered chimpanzee population in forest fragments of Uganda. Later, as a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, she explored behavioral and social diversity in chimpanzees by analyzing camera trap data from 40 sites across Equatorial Africa. She has educated diverse students on topics such as animal behavior, evolution, cognition, and wildlife conservation in various settings in the US and abroad.