About Us

Who We Are

The team and scientific advisory board behind Dognition.

Team

Brian Hare

Co-Founder

Brian Hare is the founder and Director of the Duke Canine Cognition Center and a Professor in both the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology and the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers, including in Science, Nature, and PNAS, and his research is frequently featured in national and international media such as the New York Times, TIME, the New Yorker, and the BBC. In 2004, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation named him a recipient of the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award, Germany's most prestigious award for scientists under 40; in 2007, Smithsonian magazine named him one of the top 37 U.S. scientists under 36. With his wife and research partner Vanessa Woods, Brian is the co-author of three books — The Genius of Dogs (2013), Survival of the Friendliest (2020), and Puppy Kindergarten (2024) — and the two are featured in the 2024 Netflix documentary Inside the Mind of a Dog.

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Vanessa Woods

Co-Founder

Vanessa Woods is an award-winning author, journalist, and research scientist at the Duke Canine Cognition Center, where she also serves as Director of the Duke Puppy Kindergarten. Her memoir Bonobo Handshake (2010), about her research with bonobos in Congo, won the Lowell Thomas Award, and in 2007 her children's book It's True! Space Turns You Into Spaghetti was named an Acclaimed Book by the Royal Society. She received her M.A. in Science Communication from the Australian National University and has written for publications including the Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, BBC Wildlife, and New Scientist. With her husband and research partner Brian Hare, Vanessa is the co-author of three books — The Genius of Dogs (2013), Survival of the Friendliest (2020), and Puppy Kindergarten (2024) — and the two are featured in the 2024 Netflix documentary Inside the Mind of a Dog.

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Our Mission

At Dognition, we believe every dog is a genius in their own way — and that understanding how your dog thinks should be open to anyone, anywhere, with a phone and a little curiosity.

We began in 2013 with a simple, radical idea: that dog owners themselves could do real science. Our cognitive assessment, built on the research of Dr. Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods, turned millions of everyday households into a global community of citizen scientists — and proved that the people who love dogs most can help us understand them best.

Now we're carrying that mission forward. Through the CanineQ app, we're bringing the power of AI and video analysis to canine cognition — making the experience richer, smarter, and more personal than ever, while opening the door to discoveries no single laboratory could make alone.

Our mission is simple: science anyone can join, insight anyone can use, and a celebration of the love we share with these remarkable animals. Because the more we understand our dogs, the more we cherish them.