Zakhiya is a PhD Scholar working with Prof. Anindya Sinha. Her research interests lie in Animal Behavior, Ecology, and Evolution. Her current proposed thesis title is "Primate Worlds: Demographic Structure and Dynamics, Social Networks and Life-History Strategies in Wild Bonnet Macaques.’
Before inducting as PhD student at NIAS, she acquired her integrated Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degree from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune (IISER Pune, 2015-2020). She did her Master’s Thesis titled ‘Effect of species richness and composition on foraging niche in mixed-species bird flocks' at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science (2019-2020) with Prof Kartik Shankar. She qualified GATE 2021 in Ecology and Evolution with an AIR 21 and the TIFR GS2021 examination. Her PhD is funded by the NIAS Fellowship program upon clearing the NIAS entrance process.
She is interested in understanding patterns, processes, and evolution of behavior, currently focused on macaques with a vision to eventually understand the human species and their socio-cultural systems better. For her PhD she will be working on data collected through 2000-2020 from the Bandipur Mudumalai Bonnet Macaque population