Kathleen Dudzinski

director, Dolphin Communication Project

Dr. Kathleen Dudzinski attended The University of Connecticut, graduating as University Scholar with a BS in the Biological Sciences in 1989. Dudzinski completed and was awarded her doctorate in Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences with a focus on Dolphin Communication and Behavior in August 1996. Her first experience related to marine mammals was as an intern with the Atlantic Cetacean Research Center in the Summer of 1987. Dudzinski was awarded a National Science Foundation Three Year Pre Doctoral Fellowship in 1990 and began graduate studies with Dr. Bernd Worsig and the Marine Mammal Research Program at Texas A&M University in September of the same year. During her graduate program, Dudzinski studied communication between Atlantic spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis) in Bahamian waters with a focus on contact behavior and signal exchange among dolphins. In 2002, Dr. Dudzinski became an Adjunct Faculty member in Psychology at the University of Southern Mississippi. With Dr. Stan Kuczaj, Kathleen advises two to three graduate students currently studying various aspects of dolphin sounds and behavior. Kuczaj and Dudzinski are preparing protocols for gathering data on dolphin behavior with a focus on comparing data from both captive and wild study sites. In 2004 and 2005, respectively, Dudzinski became Adjunct Faculty in Animal Science at the University of Rhode Island and in Environmental Science at Alaska Pacific University.