My academic background is in Biology and Philosophy. I particularly enjoy topics that intersect these two fields and my informed views on environmental issues always take into account the underlying ecological, ethical, and moral questions. I am interested in urban ecology, agriculture, food access issues, and conservation biology, and I am working towards combining all of these interests in a career. Above all, I'm looking to be in an environment where I am constantly challenged intellectually.My personal interests include animal cognition, environmental philosophy, cognitive science, neuroscience, international relations, foreign policy, ethics, morality, feminism and other social issues. In regard to animal cognition, I am curious about the evolution of consciousness and intelligence, and more specifically, the mental representations that underlie social cognition. The social intelligence hypothesis and the cultural intelligence hypothesis provide strong conceptual frameworks (Holekamp 2007, van Schaik and Burkart 2011). As for environmental philosophy, I am interested in further exploring the ideas I presented in my paper, "Environmental Pessimism and its role in Restoration Ecology". This primarily involves philosophizing about how an overall belief that the environment is deteriorating on a local, national, and international scale can be reconciled with a simultaneous push for responsible and sustainable environmental stewardship (Gifford et al. 2009).