Kathleen Dudzinski, Ph.D.

Class of:  2003

Dr. Kathleen M. Dudzinski received her doctorate in 1996 from Texas A&M University and then completed two post-doctoral fellowships in Japan. She has studied behavior and communication in several groups of dolphins in both the wild and in managed care in Central America, Japan, and Europe. During graduate school, Dr. Dudzinski designed and built a system for simultaneously recording the behavior and vocalizations of dolphins underwater and received the Fairfield Memorial Award for Innovative Research at the Tenth Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals in December 1993. The system allows recording of individual dolphin behavior and sounds simultaneously in an attempt to clarify the specific messages dolphins share. She has numerous scientific publications focused on dolphin behavior, acoustics, communication, and related topics, as well as several book chapters and two books. Currently, she is Director of the Dolphin Communication Project and Managing Editor of Aquatic Mammals Journal. She continues her research into dolphin communication and funnels research results with other DCP colleagues into after-school and outreach programs, including Eco-tours, field courses for college level programs, and various seminars and workshops.