Congratulations to Amélie Catala,
winner of the Early Career Scientist Award 2021!
Amélie Catala is a post-doctoral researcher with a main interest for interdisciplinary studies of animal behavior; integrating applied ethology, neuroscience, cognition and chemical analysis. She graduated in Biology from Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier (2014), and obtained her MSc degree in Neuroscience, Behavior and Cognition (2016) in the same University, with a thesis on canine cognition at the Clever Dog Lab, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna. Then, she completed a PhD degree in Ethology and Neurosciences (2019) in Université de Rennes 1. She studies human-animal interaction and canine olfactory processing for applied purposes such as biomedical detection in context of human epilepsy with seizure-dogs – dogs that can help people living with epilepsy.
“Trained dogs and chemical analysis demonstrate the existence of an epileptic seizure odour in humans.”
Contrary to diseases such as diabetes, no study has yet tested the possibility that epileptic seizures may be reflected in an olfactory profile, probably because of the large variety of seizure types. With the help of trained dogs and mass spectrometry, we showed that seizures are associated with olfactory characteristics, general to epilepsies, allowing them to be detected and predicted. It paves the way for fundamental and applied studies, from a better understanding of mechanisms involved in a seizure to monitoring technologies such as service dogs or wearable electronic noses.
Early Career Scientist Award
Our winner
The organising committee of the 7th Canine Science Forum is also extending a special invitation to early career scientists to submit a presentation proposal on a research topic relevant to the conference aims and scopes. One outstanding candidate will be selected to hold a plenary lecture at the CSF 2021.
Admission criteria
Candidates for the Early Career Scientist Award can be of any nationality but must be within 7 years of completion of their PhD (or equivalent higher degree) and have a scientific track record showing great promise. The candidate must not hold a permanent academic or equivalent position and must be the (or one of the) principal investigator(s) of the research project related to their proposal. The selected candidate will be asked to present a review of the project topic including any relevant results of her/his work. The topic of the proposed presentation must be relevant to one of the following major themes about dogs and other Canids: cognition, behavioural biology, evolution of canines, genetics and endo/phenotyping, dogs and humans, applied aspects of canine biology.
How to apply
Candidates must fill this form by clicking here no later than March 15th, 2021.
Judging
The international Scientific Committee of the CSF 2021 will judge proposals on:
- relevance of the research to the aims and scopes of the conference,
- originality of the research,
- clarity of thought and expression of the research question being addressed,
- research quality.
The selected candidate will be notified and publicly announced on the conference website by April 15th, 2021.
