I studied Molecular Biology and Genetics at Istanbul Technical University. During my undergraduate studies I became interested in the field of Ecology and Evolution and did internships on animal behaviour in Switzerland and Ireland. I then went on to pursue a 2-year research Master’s in Evolutionary Biology (MEME) funded by the European Union. I worked on projects using computer simulations to investigate evolution of social complexity and human cooperation. I also did behavioural economics experiments on how children learn social norms by copying others. After my Master’s, I pursued my dream of doing fieldwork and investigating human societies. I did my PhD at UCL, researching cultural evolution and behavioural adaptations in Pygmy hunter-gatherers in the Congo. During my PhD, I was part of an inter-disciplinary Hunter-Gatherer Resilience team funded by the Leverhulme Trust. I obtained a postdoctoral research fellowship from British Academy after my PhD. I am currently working as a British Academy research fellow and lecturer in Evolutionary Anthropology and Evolutionary Medicine at UCL.

Cristina Montañola Sales is an assistant professor at Institut Químic de Sarrià in Ramon Llull University, where she teaches subjects in ICT and statistics. She holds a PhD in Statistics and Operations Research and specializes in the investigation of novel quantitative methods for studying human behavior, such as agent-based models and spatio-temporal analysis. Her interdisciplinary research combines mathematics with social sciences, biomedicine and High-Performance Computing. She has studied various contexts, such as the dynamics of mobility of Gambian emigrants, demographic forecasting in South Korea, and ecological resilience of hunter-gatherers in India. Her research on tuberculosis transmissions and COVID-19 has advanced knowledge in epidemics, demographic dynamics and computational statistics. She has published articles and participated in international projects on simulation, parallel computing and global health.