Coren Apicella received her Ph.D. in biological anthropology from Harvard University and a M.Sc. in evolutionary psychology from the University of Liverpool. Before joining Penn, she completed postdoctoral training with Nicholas Christakis’s Human Nature Lab, then based at Harvard University.

She studies both hunter-gatherers and Westerners to explore the cultural and biological origins of social behavior. Her work focuses on the evolution of social and economic preferences, including cooperation, competition, mate selection, and attraction.

Coren has served as an Associate Editor for the journals Evolution & Human Behavior and Adaptive Human Behavior & Physiology, as a Council Member at Large at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, and as a co-director for Penn’s Social and Behavioral Science Initiative (SBSI).

She currently resides in NJ with her husband, Olivier Busquet, and their two children.