One Lab Tour, A New Direction: Rose Khoobyar’s Shift to Experimental Psychology

Since then, Rose has explored animal cognition hands-on, studying species like olive baboons and otters and earning a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship to expand her research. She’s also made the most of campus life—right down to singing at 3 a.m. for a crowd of fellow students during a late-night fundraiser.

Meet Rose Khoobyar 

What’s your favorite memory from your time at RIT?

I was part of a student written musical called “All About the Abittz,” and I was a lead in this musical. Prior to our performances, we performed a song at Relay for Life, and it was at three in the morning, and it had a high belt that I had to hold for several measures.  

I remember for days prior to this I was drinking multiple bottles of water a day to make sure I didn't destroy my vocal cords, but it was such a big memory for me just being there. It's very strange to have a captive audience of sleep-deprived college kids who probably wouldn't otherwise go and see a musical performance. It was very strange, but it was very fun. 

Are you graduating with the major or the career and academic plan you began with? 

I have the same major, but I have different post grad plans. When I came to RIT, I had spent my gap year working as a court clerk in my local court. I came here with the intent of getting a psychology degree as a pre-law degree and then doing the 3+ 3 Law program with Syracuse University. 

But, then, during the Psychology Lab Tour Day, we toured all the labs, including “the fish lab”— the [Comparative Cognition and Perception Lab], and I could not stop thinking about those fish! I think by the end of freshman year, I believe, is when I decided that I wanted to just research in psychology with these animals, and that changed my entire trajectory. 

​​What’s one skill you gained at RIT that you think will be most valuable in your career?

Definitely all the research experience that I've gotten. Particularly because I want to go into comparative psychology, it's been really beneficial to be in a lab that works with multiple different animals. We work with goldfish, we work with olive baboons consistently, and we've also worked with otters. 

It's been really great to have that opportunity—instead of just specializing on one animal—to have a bit of a broader net. I think it's also gotten me used to trying to solve tech problems that I wouldn't otherwise know how to solve. 

During your time at RIT, where have you studied animals? 

In the Comparative Cognition and Perception Lab, run by Dr. DeLong, we have 11 goldfish in the fish lab. 

At the Seneca Park Zoo, we work with the olive baboons. We have the primate portal set up there in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, and so we do studies with the baboons there. It's kind of like a big touch screen that they get to play on. That's also where we did some of the otter studies over the summer as part of ManyOtters, which was a big collaboration. 

Why is understanding animal behavior important? 

You can look at it from an evolutionary perspective, trying to figure out when our mechanisms evolved. 

By studying animals that are at different places on the phylogenetic scale—animals that are phylogenetically distant from humans versus a little bit closer to humans—we can see which animals seem to exhibit which skills. That can give us some really good clues to figure out when we might have developed these skills. 

It's very important from that perspective, but it's also just that I love animals. I think it's great to be able to look at an animal and get a better idea of what's going on in their brain and why they're acting the way they are. Doing research with an animal, it's like you're sharing an experience with them, and I love it.