Ritika Sibal of the Knott Lab was selected as the winner of the 2025 Denton Award for her master’s research thesis in Biology titled “Investigating Positional Behavior and Locomotion of Wild Bornean Orangutans Using Behavioral Sampling and Computer Vision.” This award is given for excellence in scholarship and research accomplishment during a master’s thesis under the mentorship of a faculty member of the Department of Biology.
Ritika earned her B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2020. She is passionate about leveraging technology to advance animal behavior research. Prior to admission in the Master’s program, Ritika volunteered at Alma Bonita Animal Rescue, where she applied her engineering skills to design and build a custom 3D-printed wheelchair for a young goat. For her Master’s thesis, Ritika developed a novel computer vision model to non-invasively track joint positions in wild orangutans. She applied this model to investigate terrestrial gait in Bornean orangutans, analyzing differences across natural substrates and in comparison with chimpanzees. She also explored bipedalism and downclimbing in both species, offering insights into great ape locomotion in the wild. Her thesis provides a novel and robust methodology to non-invasively investigate animal behavior in situ.
Congratulations, Ritika!