Aurore Avarguès-Weber
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| Born | 1983 (age 40–41)
Givry, Saône-et-Loire, France
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| Alma mater | Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier |
| Children | 2 |
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| Thesis | [[1] Cognition visuelle chez l'abeille Apis mellifera: Catégorisation par extraction de configurations spatiales et de concepts relationnels] (2010) |
| Doctoral advisor | Martin Giurfa |
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Aurore Avarguès-Weber (born 1983) is a French cognitive neuroscientist and ethologist who is researching the behaviour of bees at the Centre de Recherche sur la Cognition Animale in Toulouse.
In 2015, for investigating the brain mechanisms of visual cognition of social insects, she received an International Rising Talent Fellowship, one of the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science.[1][2] She has also received a CNRS Bronze Medal.
Avarguès-Weber is from Givry, in France.[3] After graduating high school in Chalon-sur-Saône, she chose to study in a Classe PréparatoireinLyon, and developed a passion for biology and physiology.[4]
Avarguès-Weber studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan.[4] She then researched her PhD in the lab of Martin Giurfa at the Research Centre for Animal Cognition (Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale, CRCA) in Toulouse, defending her thesis in 2010.[5] She then undertook two post-doctoral research positions, one under Lars ChittkaatQueen Mary University, and one with Jean-Christophe Sandoz in Gif-sur-Yvette.[5]
She currently works in the CRCA's EXPerience-dependent PLAsticity in INsects (EXPLAIN) team.[5] Though she initially wanted to study orangutans, Avarguès-Weber has focused on bees since 2007.[6] The results of her research have implications for both computer science and facial recognition.[3] Amongst other things, her lab has shown that bees are capable of numerical cognition and mathematical abstraction: they can add and subtract, and they recognise the concept of zero.[7][8][9] She has also shown that bees can recognise face-like patterns.[10] She is currently developing a virtual reality system to test more complex abilities of bees.[11]
Averguès-Weber has received an International Rising Talent Fellowship, and was awarded the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science in 2015, along with prize money of 20,000 euros.[3][1][2] In 2019, she received the Bronze Medal from the CNRS, the French national centre for scientific research.[12] The Bronze Medal recognises the first works of researchers; Averguès-Weber was recognised for her work on the cognition of bees.[12]
She has also written articles about her research for the general public for the magazine Pour la Science.[20][21]
Avarguès-Weber has four children.[4]
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