Aurore Avarguès-Weber facts for kids

Aurore Avarguès-Weber (born 1983) is a French scientist who studies how animals think. She is especially interested in bees! She researches their amazing brains at a special center in Toulouse, France.

In 2015, she won a big award called the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science. This was for her work on how social insects, like bees, see and understand things. She also received a special medal from the French National Centre for Scientific Research.

Early Life and Studies

Aurore Avarguès-Weber grew up in a town called Givry in France. After finishing high school, she decided to study biology and how living things work. She became very passionate about these subjects.

She went to a famous school in France called the Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan.

Researching Bee Brains

Aurore Avarguès-Weber earned her PhD (a high-level university degree) by studying bees. She worked in the lab of Martin Giurfa in Toulouse, France. After that, she continued her research at other universities, including Queen Mary University in London.

Today, she works with a team that studies how insects learn and adapt. Even though she first wanted to study orangutans, she has focused on bees since 2007.

What Bees Can Do

Her research has shown some really surprising things about bees. For example, her lab discovered that bees can:

• Count and understand numbers.
• Even add and subtract!
• Recognize the idea of "zero."
• Recognize patterns that look like faces.

Her work helps us understand how small brains can do complex tasks. It also gives ideas for computer science and how computers might recognize faces. She is even creating a virtual reality system to test bees' abilities even more!

Awards and Achievements

Aurore Avarguès-Weber has received important awards for her scientific work.

In 2015, she received the International Rising Talent Fellowship. This award is part of the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Awards. It came with prize money to help her continue her important research.

In 2019, she received the Bronze Medal from the CNRS. The CNRS is a major science organization in France. This medal is given to researchers who are just starting their careers and have already done excellent work. She was recognized for her amazing discoveries about how bees think.

Selected Publications

Here are some examples of the scientific papers Aurore Avarguès-Weber has written:

• Configural processing enables discrimination and categorization of face-like stimuli in honeybees (2009)
• Simultaneous mastering of two abstract concepts by the miniature brain of bees (2012)
• Recognition of Human Face Images by the Free Flying Wasp Vespula vulgaris (2017)
• Numerical cognition in honeybees enables addition and subtraction (2019)

She has also written articles for a science magazine called Pour la Science, sharing her research with everyone.

Personal Life

Aurore Avarguès-Weber has children.