Lauren O'Connell is an American neurobiologist and associate professor in the Department of Biology at Stanford University, specializing in the intersections of behavioral neuroscience, ecology, and evolution.
[4] After high school, she attended Tarrant County College, where she earned an Associate of Arts in Natural Sciences in 2004[5] and she spent two years before joining Cornell University.
After completing her undergraduate degree, she moved to the University of Texas at Austin, where she studied social networks in Cichlid fish with Hans Hofmann.
[9] After completing her Ph.D., O'Connell was appointed a Bauer Fellow at Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, where she established her independent research laboratory at the age of 27.
[4] At Stanford, O'Connell has continued to lead pioneering research on amphibians, focusing on the ecological and evolutionary implications of their behaviors and physiological traits.
[18] Her lab has also uncovered species-specific differences in the regulation of parenting behaviors, with South American and Malagasy poison frogs displaying distinct neural adaptations.