Hauber was born and raised in Hungary.[1] He has said that he always wanted to become an ornithologist.[1] He attended high school in Italy, before moving to the United States for college. Hauber was an undergraduate student at Yale College, where he majored in organismal biology.[2] He started focusing on birds, and the differences between the brains of different species.[1] He worked toward his doctorate at the Cornell University, where he studied brood parasiticcowbirds.[3] After graduating, Hauber moved to the University of California, Berkeley as a postdoctoral research fellow.[citation needed]
Research and career
In 2003, Hauber moved to New Zealand, where he joined the faculty at the University of Auckland. Whilst in New Zealand, he studied psychology, and earned a Doctor of Science on avian recognition systems.[4] His doctoral thesis for this degree was entitled Cognitive ecology of avian recognition systems : studies of brood parasitic and parental taxa.[5] He returned to the United States in 2009, where he joined the faculty at Graduate Center of the City University of New York.[6] Here he oversaw the biopsychology and behavioural neuroscience program.[6]
Hauber was appointed to the faculty at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2017. He established the Cowbird Laboratory, which investigates the evolution of recognition systems.[7] For example, Hauber has studied the color and shape of eggs that "host" birds will accept in their nests.[8][9] He has shown that pointy eggs are more likely to survive being in a bird's cliffside nest.[citation needed] Hauber focused his research on parasitic birds and the impact of climate change.[10] He showed that in unstable climates, distributing eggs amongst a variety of different nests made a species more resilient.[10] Hauber studies the birds that live in tree farms in East Urbana, Illinois.[1]
