Dr. Reiss is a marine mammal scientist and a professor in the Psychology Department at Hunter College. She is the Director of the Animal Behavior and Conservation MA and Certificate Programs in the Psychology Department at Hunter College. She is also a professor in the Animal Behavior and Comparative Psychology Doctoral program at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her research focuses on dolphin cognition and communication, comparative animal cognition, and the evolution of intelligence. Dr. Reiss pioneered the use of an interactive underwater keyboard system to provide dolphins with choice and control over obtaining objects and activities. She and her colleagues also demonstrated that bottlenose dolphins and Asian elephants possess the rare ability for mirror self-recognition previously considered unique to humans and great apes. Dr. Reiss’s work has been published in in numerous international and national journals and featured in science magazines, television segments and features, and newspaper articles. In her book The Dolphin in the Mirror, released in 2011, she shares her personal and professional experiences with what she calls “magnificent minds in the water.”